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THE LIFE 



HORACE GREELEY, 



EDITOR OF ''THE NEW-YORK TRIBUNE, 



FROM HIS BIRTH TO THE PRESENT TIME. 



By JAMES PARTON. 



WITH PORTRAIT AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



j^^lsifia 






BOSTON: 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

(late TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.) 
1872. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, 

By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Boston : 
Stereotyped and Printed by Rand, A very, &' Co. 



?l ^ 



?''' 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 



EAELT CHILDHOOD. 



The Village of Amherst. — Character of the Adjacent Country. — The Greeley 
Farm. — The Tribune in the Room in which its Editor was bom. — Horace 
learns to read. — Book up-side down. — Goes to School in Londonderry. — A 
District School Fortj^ Years Ago. — Horace as a Young Orator. — Has a Mania 
for spelling Hard Words. — Gets great Glory at the Spelling-School. — Recol- 
lections of his surviving School-Fellows.— His Future Eminence foretold. — 
Delicacy of Ear. — Early Choice of a Trade. — His Courage and Timidity. — 
Goes to School in Bedford. — A Favorite among his School-Fellows. — His 
early Fondness for the Village Newspaper. — Lies in Ambush for the Post- 
Rider who brought it. — Scours the Country for Books. — Project of sending 
him to an Academy. — The Old Sea-Captain. — Horace as a Farmer's Boy. — 
Let us do ourStintflrst. — HiaWay of Fishing 



CHAPTER n. 



HIS FATHER RUINED. — REMOVAL TO VERMONT, 

New Hampshire before the Era of Manufactures. — Causes of his Father's Failure. 
— Rum in the Olden Time. — An Execution in the House. —Flight of the 
Father. — Horace and the Rum-Jug. — Compromise with the Creditors. — 
Removal to another Farm. — Final Ruin. — Removal to Vermont. — The Win- 
ter Journey. — Poverty of the Family. — Scene at their New Home. — Cheer- 
fulness in Misfortune 18 

iii 



iv CONTENT^. 

CHAPTER ni. 

AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. 

PAGE 

Description of tlie Country. — Clearing up Land. — All the Family assist A la 
Swiss-Family Robinson. — Primitive Costume of Horace. — His Early Indiffer- 
ence to Dress. — His Manner and Attitude in School. — A Peacemaker among 
the Boys. — Gets into a Scrape, and out of it. — Assists his School-Fellows in 
their Studies. —An Evening Scene at Home. — Horace knows too much. — 
Disconcerts his Teachers by his Questions. — Leaves School. — The Pine-Knots 
still blaze on the Hearth. — Reads incessantly. — Becomes a great Draught- 
Player. — Bee-Hunting. — Reads at the Mansion House. — Taken for an Idiot. — 
And for a possible President. — Reads Mrs. Ilemans with Rapture. —A Wolf 
Story. — A Pedestrian Journey. — Horace and the Horseman. — Yoking the 
' Oxen. — Scene with an Old Soaker. — Rum in Westhaven. — Horace's First 
Pledge. — Narrow Escape from Drowning. — His Religious Doubts. — Becomes 
a Universalist — Discovers the Humbug of "Democracy." — Impatient to 
begin his Apprenticeship 23 



CHAPTER IV. 



APPRENTICESHIP. 

The Village of East Poultncy. —Horace applies for the Place. — Scene in the Gar- 
den. — He makes an Impression. — A Difficulty arises and is overcome. — He 
enters the Office. — Rite of Initiation. — Horace the Victor. — His Employer's 
Recollections of him. — The Pack of Cards. — Horace begins to paragraph. — 
Joins the Debating Society. — His Manner of Debating. — Horace and the 
Dandy. — His Noble Conduct to his Father. —His First Glimpse of Saratoga. 
— His Manners at the Table. — Becomes the Town Encyclopedia. — The Doc- 
tor's Story. — Recollections of One of his Fellow-Apprentices. — Horace's 
Favorite Poets. — Politics of the Time. — The Anti-Mason Excitement. — The 
Northern Spectator stops. —The Apprentice is Free 



CHAPTER V. 



HE WANDERS. 

Horace leaves Poultney. —His First Overcoat. — Home to his Father's Log-House. 
— Ranges the Country for Work. — The Sore Leg cured. — Gets Employment, 
but little Money.— Astonishes the Draught-Players. — Goes to Erie, Pa. — In- 
terview with an Editor. — Becomes a Journeyman in the Office. — Description 
of Erie. — The Lake. — His Generosity to his Father. —His New Clothes.— 
No more Work at Erie. — Starts for New York 72 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VI. 



ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. 

PAGE 

The Journey. — A Night on the Tow-Path. — He reaches the City. — Inventory of 
his Property. — Looks for a Boarding-House. — Finds One. — Expends half his 
Capital upon Clothes. —Searches for Employment. — Berated by David Hale 
as a Runaway Apprentice. — Continues the Search. — Goes to Church. — Hears 

of a VacancJ^ — Obtains Work. — The Boss takes him for a ' Fool,' but 

changes his opinion. — Nicknamed ' The Ghost.' — Practical Jokes. — Horace 
metamorphosed. — Dispute about Commas. — The Shoemaker's Boarding- 
House. — Grand Banquet on Sundays 84 



CHAPTER Vn. 



FROM OFFICE TO OFFICE. 

Leaves West's. — Works on the ' Evening Post.'— Story of Mr. Leggett. — ' Com- 
mercial Advertiser.' — ' Spirit of the Times.' — Specimen of his Writing at this 
Period. — Naturally Fond of the Drama. — Timothj' Wiggins. — Works for Mr. 
Redfield. — The First Lift 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FIRST PENNY PAPER, AND WHO THOUGHT OP IT. 

Importance of the Cheap Daily Press. — The Originator of the Idea. — History of 
the Idea. — Dr. Sheppard's Chatham-Street Cogitations — The Idea is con- 
ceived. —It is bom. — Interview with Horace Greeley. — The Doctor thinks he 
is 'no Common Boy.' — The Schemer baffled. —Daily Papers Twentj^-five 
Years Ago. — Dr. Sheppard comes to a Resolution. — The Firm of Greeley and 
Story. —The Morning Post appears. — And fails. — The Sphere of the Cheap 
Press. — Fanny Fern and the Pea-Xut Merchant 103 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE FIRM CONTINUES. 

Lottery Printing. —The Constitutionalist. — Dudley S. Gregory. — The Lottery 
Suicide. — The Firm prospers. —Sudden Death of Mr. Story.— A New Part- 
ner.- Mr. Greeley as a Master. — A Dinner Story. — Sylvester Graham.— 
Horace Greeley at the Graham House. — The New Yorker projected. —James 
Gordon Bennett 112 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. 

PAGE 

Character of the Paper. — Its Early Fortunes. — Happiness of the Editor. — Scene 
in the Office. — Specimens of Horace Greeley's Poetry. — Subjects of his 
Essays. — His Opinions then. — His Marriage. —The Silk-Stocking Story. — 
A Day in Washington. — His Impressions of the Senate. — Pecuniary Difficul- 
ties. —Cause of the New Yorker's Ill-Success as a Business.— The Missing 
Letters. — The Editor gets a Nickname. — The Agonies of a Debtor. — Park 
Benjamin. — Henry J. Raymond 117 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE JEFFERSONIAN. 

Objects of the Jeffersonian. — Its Character. —A Novel Glorious- Victory Para- 
graph.— The Graves and Cilley Duel. — The Editor overworked 140 

CHAPTER Xn. 

THE LOG-CABIN. — " TIPPECANOE AND TYLER TOO." 

Wire-Pulling. —The Delirium of 1840. — The Log-Cabin. — Unprecedented Hit.— 
A Glance at its Pages. — Log-Cabin Jokes. — Log-Cabin Song. —Horace 
Greeley and the Cake-Basket. — Pecuniary Difficulties continue. — The 
Tribune announced 146 

CHAPTER XIII. 

STARTS THE TRIBUNE. 

The Capital. — The Daily Press of New York in 1841. — The Tribune appears.— 
The Omens Unpropitious. — The First Week. — Conspiracy to put down the 
Tribune. — The Tribune triumphs. — Thomas McElrath. — The Tribune alive. 
— Industry of the Editors. — Their Independence. — Horace Greeley and John 
Tyler. —The Tribune a Fixed Fact 157 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. 

What made Horace Greeley a Socialist. — The Hard Winter of 1838. — Albert Bris- 
bane. —The Subject broached. —Series of Articles by Mr. Brisbane begun.— 
Their Effect. — Cry of Mad Dog. — Discussion between Horace Greeley and 
Henry J. Raymond. — How it arose. —Abstract of it in a Conversational Form. 165 



CONTENTS. VU 

" CHAPTER XV. 

THE tribune's SECOND TEAK. 

PAGE 

Increase of Price. — The Tribune offends the Sixth-Ward Fighting-Men. — The 
Office threatened. — Novel Preparations for Defence. — Charles Dickens de- 
fended. —The Editor travels. — Visits Washington, and sketches the Senators. 

— At Mount Vernon. —At Niagara. — A Hard Hit at Major Noah 183 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE TRIBUNE ANB J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

The Libel. — Horace Greeley's Narrative of the Trial. — He reviews the Opening 
Speech of Mr. Cooper's Counsel. — A Striking Illustration. — He addresses the 
Jury. — Mr. Cooper sums up. — Horace Greeley comments on the Speech of 
the Novelist. — In doing so he perpetrates New Libels. — The Verdict. — Mr. 
Greeley's Remarks on the Same. — Strikes a Bee-Line for New York. — A New 
Suit — An Imaginary Case 190 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE TRIBUNE CONTINUES. 

The Special Express System. — Night Adventures of Enoch Ward. — Gig Express. 

— Express from Halifax. — Balked by the Snow-Drifts. — Party Warfare 
then. — Books published by Greeley and McElrath. — Course of the Tribune. — 
The Editor travels. — Scenes in Washington. — An Incident of Travel. — Clay 
and Frelinghuysen. — The Exertions of Horace Greeley. — Results of the De- 
feat—The Tribune and Slavery. — Burning of the Tribune Building. — The 
Editor's Reflections upon the Fire 208 

CHAPTER XVni. 

MARGARET FULLER. 

Her Writings in the Tribune. — She resides with Mr. Greeley. — His Narrative.— 
Dietetic Sparring. — Her Manner of Writing. —Woman's Rights. —Her Gene- 
rosity.— Her Independence. —Her Love of Children. — Margaret and Pickie. 

— Her Opinion of Mr. Greeley. — Death of Pickie 219 

CHAPTER XIX. 

EDITORIAL REPARTEES. 

At War with all the World. — The Spirit of the Tribune. — Retorts Vituperative. 

— The Tribune and Dr. Potts.— Some Prize Tracts suggested. — An Atheist's 
Oath. —A Word for Domestics. —Irish Democracy. — The Modern Drama. — 
Hit at Dr. Hawks. — Dissolution of the Union. — Dr. Franklin's Story. — A 
Picture for Polk. — Charles Dickens and Copyright. — Charge of Malignant 
Falsehood. — Preaching and Practice. — Col. Webb severely hit. — Hostility to 
the Mexican War. — Violence incited. — A Few Sparks. — The Course of the 
Tribune. — Wager with the Herald 229 



VUl CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XX 

18481 

PAGE 

Eevolution in Europe. —The Tribune exults. — The Slievegammon Letters.— 
Taylor and Fillmore. — Course of the Tribune. — Horace Greeley at Vauxhall 
Garden. — His Election to Congress 248 

CHAPTER XXI. 

THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

His Objects as a Member of Congress. — His First Acts. — The Chaplain Hypoc- 
risy. — The Land Reform Bill. — Distributing the Documents. — Offers a Novel 
Resolution. — The Mileage ExposiJ. — Congressional Delays. —Explosion in 
the House. —Mr. Turner's Oration. — Mr. Greeley defends himself. — The 
Walker Tariff. — Congress in a Pet. — Speech at the Printer's Festival. — The 
House in Good Humor. — Travelling Dead- Head. — Personal Explanations.— 
A Dry Haul. —The Amendment Game. — Congressional Dignity. — Battle of 
the Books. — The Recruiting System. — The Last Night of the Session. — The 
' Usual Gratuity.' — The Inauguration Ball. — Farewell to his Constituents 254 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ASSOCIATION IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

Accessions to the Corps. — The Course of the Tribune. — Horace Greeley in Ohio. — 
The Rochester Knockings.— The Mediums at Mr. Greeley's House. —Jenny 
Lind goes to see them. — Her Behavior. — Woman's Rights Convention. — 
The Tribune Association. — The Hireling System 285 



. CHAPTER XXIII. 

ON THE PLATFORM. — HINTS TOWARDS REFORMS. 

The Lecture System. — Comparative Popularity of the Leading Lecturers. — 
Horace Greeley at the Tabernacle. — His Audience. — His Appearance. — His 
Manner of Speaking. — His Occasional Addresses. — The ' Hints ' published. — 
Its one Subject, the Emancipation of Labor. —The Problems of the Time. — 
The 'Successful' Man. — The Duty of the State. — The Educated Class. — A 
Narrative for Workingmen. — The Catastrophe 



^ CONTENTS. IX 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

PAGE 

The Voyage Out. — First Impression of England. — Opening of the Exhibition. — 
Characteristic Observations. —He attends a Grand Banquet. — He sees the 
Sights. — He speaks at Exeter Hall. — Tlxe Play at Devonshire House.— 
Robert Owen's Birthday. — Horace Greeley before a Committee of the House 
of Commons. — He throws Light upon the Subject. — Vindicates the American 
Press. —Journey to Paris. —The Sights of Paris. — The Opera and Ballet. — A 
False Prophet. — His Opinion of the French. —Journey to Italy. — Anecdote. 
— A Nap in the Diligence. —Arrival at Rome. —In the Galleries. — Scene in 
the Coliseum. — To England again. — Triumph of the American Reaper. — A 
Week in Ireland and Scotland. — His Opinion of the English. — Homeward 
Bound. —His Arrival. — The Extra Tribune 312 

CHAPTER XXV. 

RECENTLY. 

Deliverance from Party. — A Private Platform. — Last Interview with Henry 
Clay. — Horace Greeley a Fanner. —He irrigates and drains. —His Advice to 
a Young Man. — The Daily Times. — A Costly Mistake. —The Isms of the Tri- 
bune. —The Tribune gets Glory. — The Tribune in Parliament. — Proposed 
Nomination for Governor. — His Life written. — A Judge's Daughter for Sale. 341 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBTTNE OFFICE. 

The Streets before Daybreak. — "Waking the Newsboys. — Morning Scene in the 
Press-Room. — The Compositors' Room. — The Four Phalanxes. —The Tribune 
Directory. — A Lull in the Tribune Office. — A Glance at the Paper. —The 
Advertisements. — Telegraphic Marvels. — Marine Intelligence. — New Publi- 
cations. — Letters from the People. — Editorial Articles. — The Editorial 
Rooms. — The Sanctum Sanctorum. — Solon Robinson. — Bayard Taylor.— 
William Henry Fry. — George Ripley. — Charles A. Dana. — F. J. Ottarson. — 
George M. Snow. —Enter Horace Greeley. — His Preliminary Botheration. — 
The Composing-Room in the Evening. — The Editors at Work. —Mr. Greeley's 
Manner of Writing. — Midnight. — Three O'clock in the Morning. — The 
Carriers 357 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. 

Voyage to Europe. — Visit to the Exhibition. — At the Tomb of Napoleon. —Two 
Days in the Debtors' Prison. — In London again. — Comments of the Editor 
on Men and Things 378 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXVni. 

ASSAULTED IN WASHINGTON BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. 

FA6K 
The Provocation. — The Assault. — "Why Mr. Greeley did not prosecute. — The 
Tribune indicted in Virginia. — Correspondence on Slavery. — Slavery ex 
Labor 401 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA. 

Farewell to Civilization. — The Buffaloes on the Plains. — Conversation vt^ith 
Brigham Young. — Remarks upon Polygamy. — Visit to the Yo Semite Valley. 
— Reception at Sacramento. — At San Francisco 417 



CHAPTER XXX. 

HORACE GREELEY AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION OF 1860. 

Mr. Greeley'8 Reasons for opposing Mr. Seward. — Mr. Raymond's Accusation. — 
The Private Letter to Mr. Seward. —The Comments of Thurlow Weed. — The 
Three-Cent Stamp Correspondence. — Mr. Greeley a Candidate for the Senate. 
— He declines a Seat in Mr. Lincoln's Tabernacle 442 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



DURING THE WAR. 

Mr. Greeley's Opinions upon Secession before the War began. — The Battle of 
Bull Run. — Correspondence with President Lincoln. — His Peace Negotia- 
tions.— Assault upon the Tribune Office. — Indorses the Proffer of the French 
Mission to the Editor of the Herald. — He writes a History of the War. — He 
offers Prizes for Improved Fruits 461 



CHAPTER XXXII. 



RECONSTRUCTION. 

Horace Greeley's Plan.— His Mediation between President Johnson and Con- 
gress. — He joins in bailing Jefferson Davis. — His Speech at Richmond 492 



CONTENTS. Xl 

CHAPTER XXXni. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

PAGE 

Horace Greeley upon Poetry and the Poets. — He objects to being enrolled among 
the Poets. — His Advice to a Country Editor. — His Religious Opinions.— 
Upon Marriage and Divorce. — His Idea of an American College. — How he 
would bequeath an Estate. — How he became a Protectionist. — Advice to 
Ambitious Young Men. — To the Lovers of Knowledge. — To Young Lawyers 
and Doctors. — To Country Merchants. — How Far he is a Politician. — A 
Toast. — Reply to Begging Letters 518 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 
HoBACE Greeley nominated for the Presidency 539 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Steel Portrait by Ritchie. ^ 

WOOD-CUTS. 

Full-Length Portrait. ' 
Horace Greeley's Birthplace. - 
Where Greeley attended School. . 
Greeley's Arrival in New York. . 
Editorial Rooms, — Greeley and Dana. 
Facsimile of Editorl^l MS. . 
View of the Tribune Buildings. ' 
Country Residence of Horace Greeley. 



s 




\ 



CHAPTER I. 

BIBTH AND CHILDHOOD. 

Birth of Horace Greeley— The Town of Amherst^The Greeley farm— The Trib- 
une in the room in which its Editor was born — Horace learns to read — Book 
up-side down — Goes to school in Londonderry — A district school forty years 
ago — Horace as a young orator — Has a mania for spelling hard words— Gets 
great glory at the spelling-school — Recollections of his surviving schoolfel- 
lows—His future eminence foretold — Delicacy of ear— Early choice of a trade 
— His courage and timidity— Goes to school in Bedford— A favorite among his 
schoolfellows — His early fondness for the village newspaper — Lies in ambush 
for the post-rider who brought it — Scours the country for books — Project of 
sending him to au academy — The old sea-captain — Horace as a farmer's boy — 
Let us do our stint first — His way of fishing. 

Horace Greeley was born at Amherst, in New Hampshire, 
Feb. 3, 1811. He was the third of the seven children of Zaccheus 
Greeley, a respectable farmer, of Scotch-Irish lineage. 

The township of Amherst contains about eight square miles of some- 
what better land than the land of New England generally is. "Wheat 
cannot be grown on it to advantage, but it yields fair returns of 
rye, oats, potatoes, Indian corn, and young men : the last-named of 
which commoditi^.s forms the chief article of export. The farmers 
have to contend against hills, rocks, stones innumerable, sand, 
marsh, and long winters; but a hundred years of tillage have sub- 
dued these obstacles in part, f.nd the people generally enjoy a safe 
and moderate prosperity. Yrf severe is their toil. To see them 
ploughing alopg the sides of those steep, rocky hills, the plough 
creaking, tbr oxen groanin/, the little boy-driver leaping from sod 
to sod, as an Alpine boy i*". f^upposed to leap from crag to crag, the 
oloughman wrenching the plough round the rooks, boy and man 
every minute or two rniting in a prolonged and agonizing yell for 
the panting beasts to stop, when the plough is .^r'lf^ht by a hidden 
rock too large for it to overturn, and the soiemn slowness with 
which the procession winds, and creaks, and groans along, gives tc 
the languid citizen, who chances to pass by, a new idea of hard 
work, and a new sense of the happiness of his lot. 
1 1 



2 EARLY CHILDHOOD. 

The farm owLed by Zaccheus Greeley when his son Horace was 
corn, was four or five miles from the village of Amherst. It cod- 
Bisted of fifty acres of land — heavy land to till — rocky, moist, 
and uneven, worth then eight hundred dollars, now two thousand. 
The house, a small, unpainted, but substantial and well-built farra- 
liouse, stood, and still stands, upon a ledge or platform, half way 
op a high, steep, and rocky hill, commanding an extensive and al- 
most panoramic view of the surrounding country. In whatever 
direction the boy may have looked, he saw rocJc. Rock is the 
feature of the landscape. There is rock in the old orchard behind 
the house; rocks peep out from the grass in the pastures; there is 
rock along the road ; rock on the sides of the hills ; rock on their 
summits ; rock in the valleys ; rock in the woods ; — rock, rock, 
everywhere rock. And yet the country has not a barren look. I 
should call ii a serious looking country ; one that would be congenial 
to grim covenanters and exiled round-heads. The prevailing colors 
are dark, even in the brightest month of the year. The pine woods, 
the rock, the shade of the hill, the color of the soil, are all dark 
and serious. It is a still, unfrequented region. One may ride along 
the road upon which the house stands, for many a mile, without 
passing a single vehicle. The turtles hobble across the road fear- 
less of the crushing wheel. If any one wished to know the full 
meaning of the word country^ as distinguished from the word town, 
he need do no more than ascend the hill on which Horace Greeley 
saw the light, and look around. 

Yet, the voice of the city is heard even there ; the opinions of 
the city influence there; for, observe, in the very room in which 
our hero was born, on a table which stands where, in other days, a 
bed stood, we recognize, among the heap of newspapers, the wel]- 
known heading of the Weekly Tribune. 

Such was the character of the region in which Horace Greeley 
passed the greater part of the first seven years of his life. His 
father's neighbors were all hard-working farmers — men who work- 
ed their own farms — who were nearly equal in wealth, and to whom 
the idea of social inequality, founded upon an inequality in possess- 
ions, did not exist, even as an idea. Wealth and want were alike 
unknown. It was a community of plain people, who had derived 
all their book-knowledge from the district school, and depended 



HORACE LEARNS TO READ. 3 

upon the village newspaper for their knowledge of the world with- 
out. There were no heretics among them. All the people either 
cordially embraced or undoubtingly assented to the faith called 
Orthodox, and all of them attended, more or less regularly, the 
churches in which that faith was expounded. 

The first great peril of his existence escaped, the boy grew apace, 
and passed through the minor and ordinary dangers of infancy with- 
out having his equanimity seriously disturbed. He was a " quiet 
and peaceable child," reports his father, and, though far from robust, 
suffered little from actual sickness. 

To say that Horace Greeley, from the earliest months of his exist- 
ence, manifested signs of extraordinary intelligence, is only to repeat 
what every biographer asserts of his hero, and every mother of her 
child. Yet, common-place as it is, the truth must be told. Horace 
Greeley did^ as a very young child, manifest signs of extraordinary 
intelligence. He took to learning with the promptitude and in- 
stinctive, irrepressible love, with which a duck is said to take to the 
water. His first instructor was his mother; and never was there 
a mother better calculated to awaken the mind of a child, and 
keep it awake, than Mrs. Greeley. 

Tall, muscular, well-formed, with the'strength of a man without 
his coarseness, active in her habits, not only capable of hard work, 
but delighting in it, with a perpetual overflow of animal spirits, an 
exhaustless store of songs, ballads and stories, and a boundless, ex- 
uberant good will toward all living things, Mrs. Greeley was the 
life of the house, the favorite of the neighborhood, the natural 
friend and ally of children ; whatever she did she did " with a will.'* 
She was a great reader, and remembered all she read. "Sha 
worked," says one of my informants, " in doors and out of doors, 
could out-rake any man in the town, and could load the hay-wag 
ons as fast and as well as her husband. She hoed in the garden : 
she labored in the field ; and, while doing more than the work of an 
ordinary man and an ordinary woman combined, would laugh and 
sing all day long, and tell stories all the evening." 

To these stories the boy listened greedily, as he sat on the flooj 
at her feet, while she spun and talked with equal energy. They 
" served," says Mr. Greeley, in a passage already quoted, " to awaken 
in me a thirst for knowledge, and a lively interest in learning and 



4 EARLY CHILDHOOD. 

history." Think of it, you word-mongering, gerund-grinding 
teachers who delight in signs and symbols, and figures and " facts," 
and feed little children's souls on the dry, innutrtious husks of 
knowledge ; and think of it, you play-abhorring, fiction-forbidding 
parents ! Awaken the interest in learning, and the thirst for knowl- 
edge, and there is no predicting what may or what may not result 
from it. Scarcely a man, distinguished for the supremacy or the 
beauty of his immortal part, has written the history of his childhood 
without recording the fact that the celestial fire was first kindled 
in his soul by means similar to those which awakened an " interest 
in learning" and a " thirst for knowledge" in the mind of Horace 
Greeley. 

Horace learned to read before he had learned to talk ; that is, 
before he could pronounce the longer words. No one regularly 
taught him. When he was little more than two years old, he began 
to pore over the Bible, opened for his entertainment on the floor, 
and examine with curiosity the newspaper given him to play with. 
He cannot remember a time when he could not read, nor can any 
one give an account of the process by which he learned, except that 
he asked questions incessantly, first about the pictures in the news- 
paper, then about the capital letters, then about the smaller ones, 
and finally about the words and sentences. At three years of age 
he could read easily and correctly any of the books prepared for 
children; and at four, any book whatever. But he was not satisfied 
with overcoming the ordinary difficulties of reading. Allowing 
that nature gives to every child a certain amount of mental force to 
be used in acquiring the art of reading, Horace had an over- 
plus of that force, which he employed in learning to read with hia 
book in positions which increased the difficulty of the feat. All the 
friends and neighbors of his early childhood, in reporting him a 
prodigy unexampled, adduce as the unanswerable and clinching 
proof of the fact, that, at the age of four years, he could read 
any book in whatever position it might be placed, — rigl t-side up, 
up-side down, or sidewise. 

His third winter Horace spent at the house of his grandfather, 
David Woodburn, in Londonderry, attended the district school 
there, and distinguished himself greatly. He had no right to at- 
tend the Londonderry school, and the people of the rural districts 




[the school house.] 



A DISTRICT SCHOOL FORTY YEARS AGO. O 

Are apt to be strenuous upon the point of not admitting ti; their 
school pupils from other towns ; but Horace was an engaging 
child; "every one liked the httle, white-headed fellow," says a 
surviving member of the school committee, "and so we favored 
him." 

A district school — and what was a district school forty year? 
ago ? Horace Greeley never attended any but a district school, and 
it concerns us to know what manner of place it was, and what 
was its routine of exercises. 

The school-house stood in an open place, formed (usually) by the 
crossing of roads. It was very small, and of one story ; contained 
one apartment, had two windows on each side, a small door in the 
gable end that faced the road, and a low door-step before it. It 
was the thing called house, in its simplest form. But for its roof, 
windows, and door, it had been a box, large, rough, and un painted. 
"Within and without, it was destitute of anything ornamental. It 
was not enclosed by a fence ; it was not shaded by a tree. The sun 
in summer, the winds in winter, had their will of it : there was no- 
thing to avert the fury of either. The log school-houses of the pre- 
vious generation were picturesque and comfortable ; those of the 
present time are as prim, neat, and orderly (and as elegant some- 
times) as the cottage of an old maid who enjoys an annuity ; but the 
fichool-house of forty years ago had an aspect singularly forlorn and 
uninviting. It was built for an average of thirty pupils, but it fre- 
quently contained fifty ; and then the little school-room was a com- 
pact mass of young humanity : the teacher had to dispense with 
his table, and was lucky if he could find room for his chair. The 
side of the apartment opposite the door was occupied, chiefly, by a 
vast fireplace, four or five feet wide, where a carman's load of wood 
could burn in one prodigious fire. Along the sides of the room was 
a low, slanting shelf, which served for a desk to those who wrote, 
and against the sharp edge of which the elder pupils leaned when 
they were not writing. The seats were made of " slabs," inverted, 
supported on sticks, and without backs. The elder pupils sat along 
the sides of the room, — the girls on one side, the boys on the other ; 
the youngest sat nearest the fire, where they were as much too 
warm as those wh«. sat near the door were too cold. In a school 
of forty pupils, th jre would be a dozen who were grown up, mar- 



b EARLY CHILDHOOD. 

riageable young men and women. Not unfreqi^entl} married men. 
and occasionally married women, attended school in the winter. 
Among the younger pupils, there were usually a dozen who could 
not read, and half as many who did not know the alphabet. The 
teacher was, perhaps, one of the farmer's sons of the district, who 
knew a little more than his elder pupils, and only a little ; or he 
was a student who was working his way through college. Eia 
wages were those of a farm-laborer, ten or twelve dollars a month 
and his board. He boarded " round^'' i. e. he lived a few days at 
each of the houses of the district, stopping longest at the most 
agreeable place. The grand qualification of a teacher was the abil- 
ity " to do" any sum in the arithmetic. To know arithmetic was to 
be a learned man. Generally, the teacher was very young, some- 
times not more than sixteen years old ; but, if he possessed the due 
expertness at figures, if he could read the Bible without stumbling 
over the long words, and without mispronouncing more than two 
thirds of the proper names, if he could write well enough to set a 
decent copy, if he could mend a pen, if he had vigor enough of 
character to assert his authority, and strength enough of arm to 
maintain it, he would do. The school began at nine in the morn- 
ing, and the arrival of that hour was announced by the teacher's 
rapping upon the window frame with a ruler. The boys, and the 
girls too, came tumbling in, rosy and glowing, from their snow- 
balling and sledding. The first thing done in school was reading. 
The " first class," consisting of that third of the pupils who could 
read best, stood on the floor and read round once, each individual 
reading about half a page of the English Reader. Then the second 
class. Then the third. Last of all, the youngest children said their 
letters. By that time, a third of the morning was over ; and then 
the reading began again ; for public opinion demanded of the teach- 
er that he should hear every pupil read four times a day, twice in 
the morning and twice in the afternoon. Those who were not in 
the class reading, were employed, or were supposed to be employed, 
in ciphering or writing. When they wanted to write, they went to 
the teacher with their writing-book and pen, and he set a copy, — 
" Procrastination is the thief of time," " Contentment is a virtue," 
or some other wise saw, — and mended the pen. When they were 
puzzled with a "sum," they went to the teacher to have it elucidat- 



THE SPELLING SCHOOL. 7 

ed. They seom to have written and ciphered as much or as liLtle 
as they chose, at what time they chose, and in what manner. Ii 
some schools there were classes in arithmetic and regular instruc- 
tion in writing, and one class in grammar ; but such schools, forty 
years ago, were rare. The exercises of the morning were concluded 
with a general spell^ the teacher giving out the words from a spell- 
ing-hook, and the pupils spelling them at the top of their voices. 
At noon the school was dismissed ; at one it was summoned again, 
to go through, for the next three hours, precisely the same routine 
as that of the morning. In this rude way the last generation of 
children learned to read, write, and cipher. But they learned 
something more in those rude Cohool-houses. They learned obedi- 
ence. They were tamed and disciplined. The means employed 
were extremely unscientific, but the thing was done! The means, 
in fact, were merely a ruler, and what was called, in contradistinc- 
tion to that milder weapon, " the heavy gad ;" by which express- 
ion was designated five feet of elastic sapling of one year's growth. 
These two implements were plied vigorously and often. Girls got 
their full share of them. Girls old enough to be wives were no 
more exempt than the young men old enough to marry them, who 
sat on the other side of the schoolroom. It was thought, that if a 
youth of either sex was not too old to do wrong, neither he nor she 
was too old to sufier the consequences. In some districts, a teacher 
was valued in proportion to his severity ; and if he were backward 
in applying the ferule and the " gad," the parents soon began to be 
uneasy. They thought he had no eneigy, and inferred that the 
children could not be learning nmch. In the district schools, then, 
of forty years ago, all the pupils learned to read and to obey ; most 
of them learned to write ; many acquired a competent knowledge 
of figures ; a few learned the rudiments of grammar ; and if any 
learned more than these, it was generally due to their unassisted 
and unencouraged exertions. There were no school-libraries at that 
time. The teachers usually possessed little general information, and 
the little they did possess was not often made to contribute to the 
mental nourishment of their pupils. 

On one of the first benches of the Ijondonderry school-house, neai 
the fire, we may imagine the little white-headed fellow, whom every 
body liked, to be seated during the winters of 1813-14 and '14-'15. He 



S EARLY CHlLDHpOD. 

was eager to go to school. Wlien the snow lay on the ground in 
drifts too deep for him to wade through, one of his aunts, who still 
lives to tell the story, would take him up on her shoulders and 
carry him to the door. He was the possessor that winter, of three 
books, the " Columbian Orator," Morse's Geography, and a spell- 
ing book. From the Columbian Orator, he learned many pieces by 
heart, and among others, that very celebrated oration which prob- 
ably the majority of the inhabitants of this nation have at some pe- 
riod of their lives been able to repeat, beginning, 

" You 'd scarce expect one of my age 
To speak in public on the stage." 

One of his schoolfellows has a vivid remembrance of Horace's re- 
citing this piece before the whole school in Londonderry, before he 
was old enough to utter the words plainly. He had a lisping, 
whining little voice, says my informant, but spoke with the utmost 
confidence, and greatly to the amusement of the school. He spoke 
the piece eo often in public and private, as to become, as it were, 
identified with it, as a man who knows one song suggests that 
song by his presence, and is called upon to sing it wherever he 
goes. 

It is a pity that no one thinks of the vast importance of those 
" Orators " and reading books which the children read and wear 
'out in reading, learning parts of them by heart, and repeating 
them over and over, till they become fixed in the memory and 
embedded in the character forever. And it is a pity that those 
books should contain so much false sentiment, inflated language, 
Buncombe oratory, and other trash, as they generally do ! To 
compile a series of Reading Books for the common schools of 
this country, were a task for a conclave of the wisest and best men 
and women that ever lived; a task worthy of them, both from its 
diflBculty and the incalculable extent of its possible results. 

Spelling was the passion of the little orator during the first win- 
ters of his attendance at school. He spelt incessantly in school and 
out of school. He would lie on the floor at his grandfather's house, 
for hours at a time, spelling hard words, all that he could find m 
the Bible and the few other books within his reach. It was the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS SURVIVING SCHOOLFELLOWS. y 

stauding atnusement of the family to try and puzzle the boy with 
words, and no one- remembers succeeding. Spelling, moreover, 
was one of the great points of the district schools in those days, 
and he who could out-spell, or, as the phrase was, " spell down " 
the whole school, ranked second only to him who surpassed the 
rest in arithmetic. Those were the palmy days of the spelling- 
school. The pupils assembled once a week, voluntarily, at the 
school-house, chose " sides," and contended with one another long 
and earnestly for the victory. Horace, young as he was, was eager 
to attend the spelling school, and was never known to injure the 
" side " on which he was chosen by missing a word, and it soon 
became a prime object at the spelling-school to get the first choice, 
because that enabled the lucky side to secure the powerful aid of 
Horace Greeley. He is well remembered by his companions in or- 
thography. They delight still to tell of the little fellow, in the 
long evenings, falling asleep in his place, and when it came his 
turn, his neighbors gave him an anxious nudge, and he would wake 
instantly, spell off his word, and drop asleep again in a moment. 

Horace went to school three terms in Londonderry, spending 
part of each year at home. I will state as nearly as possible in 
their own words, what his school-fellows there remember of him. 

One of them can just recall him as a very small boy with a head as 
white as snow, who " was almost always up head in his class, and took 
it so much to heart when he did happen to lose his place, that he 
would cry bitterly ; so that some boys when they had gained the right 
to get above him, declined the honor, because it hurt Horace's 
feelings so." He was the pet of the school. Those whom he used 
to excel most signally liked him as well as the rest. He was an 
active, bright, eager boy, but not fond of play, and seldom took 
part in the sports of the other boys. One muster day, this inform- 
ant remembers, the clergyman of Londonderry, who had heard 
glowing accounts of Horace's feats at school, took him on his lap in 
the field, questioned him a long time, tried to puzzle him with hard 
words, and concluded by saying with strong emphasis to one of the 
boy's relatives, " Mark my words, Mr. Woodburn, that boy was not 
made for nothing." 

Another, besides confirming the above, adds that Horace was 
in some respects exceedingly brave, and in others exceedingly tim 



10 EARLY CHILDHOOD. 

orous. He was never afraid of the dark, could not be frightened 
by ghost-stories, never was abashed in speaking or reciting, was 
not to be overawed by supposed superiority of knowledge or rank, 
would talk up to the teacher and question his decision with perfect 
freedom, though never in a spirit of impertinenxje. Yet he could 
not stand up to a boy and fight. "When attacked, he would nei- 
ther fight nor run away, but " stand still and take it." His ear 
was so delicately constructed that any loud noise, like the report of 
a gun, would almost throw him into convulsions. If a gun were 
about to be discharged, he would either run away as fast as his 
legs could carry him, or else would throw himself upon the 
ground and stufi" grass into his ears to deaden the dreadful noise. 
On the fourth of July, when the people of Londonderry inflamed 
their patriotism by a copious consumption of gunpowder, Horace 
would run into the woods to get beyond the sound of the cannons 
and pistols. It was at Londonderry, and about his fourth yeiir, thai 
Horace began the habit of reading or book-devouring, which ho 
never lost during all the years of his boyhood, youth, and appren- 
ticeship, and relinquished only when he entered that most exacting 
of all professions, the editorial. The gentleman whose reminis- 
cences I am now recording, tells me that Horace in his fifth and 
sixth years, would lie under a tree on his face, reading hour after 
hour, completely absorbed in his book ; and " if no one stumbled 
over him or stirred him up," would read on, unmindful of dinr>ei 
time and sun-set, as long as he could see. It was his delight ii 
books that made him, when little more than an infant, determint 
to be a printer, as printers, he supposed, were they who made books 
" One day," says this gentleman, " Horace and I went to a black 
smith's shop, and Horace watched the process of horse-shoeing witli 
much interest. The blacksmith, observing how intently he lookea 
on, said, ' You 'd better come with me and learn the trade.' ' No, 
said Horace in his prompt, decided way, ' I 'm going to be a printer.' 
He was then six years old, and very small for his age ; and this pos- 
itive choice of a career by so diminutive a piece of humanity 
mightily amused the by-standers. The blacksmith used to tell the 
story with great glee when Horace was a printer, and one of some 
note." 
Another gentleman, who went to school with Horace at London- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS SURVIVING SCHOOLFELLOWS. 11 

derry, writes : — " I think I attended school with Horace Greeley 
two summers and two winters, but have no recollection of seeing 
him except at the school-house. He was an exceedingly mild, quiet 
and inoffensive child, entirely devoted to his books at school. It 
used to be said in the neighborhood, that he was the same out of 
school, and that his parents were obliged to secrete his books to 
prevent his injuring himself by over study. His devotion to his 
books, together with the fact of his great advancement beyond 
others of his age in the few studies then pursued in the district 
school, rendered him notorious in that part of the town. He was 
regarded as a prodigy, and his name was a household world. He 
was looked upon as standing alone, and entirely unapproachable by 
any of the little mortals around liim. Reading, parsing, .and spelling 
are the only branches of learning which I remember him in, or in 
connection with which his name was at that time mentioned, 
though he might have given some attention to writing and arith- 
metic, which completed the circle of studies in the district school at 
that time; but in the three branches first named he excelled all, even 
in the winter school, which was attended by several young men and 
women, some of whom became teachers soon after. Though 
mild and quiet, he was ambitious in the school ; to be at the head 
of his class, and be accounted the best scholar in school, seemed 
to be prominent objects with him, and to furnish strong motives to 
effort. I can recall but one instance of his missing a word in tho 
spelling class. The classes went on to the floor to spell, and he al 
most invariably stood at the head of the 'first class,' embracing 
the most advanced scholars. He stood there at the time referred 
to, and by missing a word, lost his place, which so grieved him that 
he wept like a punished child. While I knew him he did not en- 
gage with other children in the usual recreations t.nd amuse- 
ments of the school grounds ; as soon as the school was dismissed at 
noon, he would start for home, a distance of half a mile, with all 
his books u ider his arm, including the New Testament, Webster's 
Spelling Book, English Reader, &c., and would not return till the 
last moment of intermission ; at least such was his practice in the 
summer time. With regard to his aptness in spelling, it used to be 
said that the minister of the town. Rev. Mr. McGregor, once at- 
tempted to find a w -d or name in the Bible which he could nol 



12 EARLY CHILDHOOD. 

spell correctly, but tti'ied to do so. I always supposed, however, 
that this was an exaggeration, for he could not have been more than 
seven years old at the time this was told. My father soon after re- 
moved to another town thirty miles distant, and I lost sight of the 
family entirely, Horace and all, though I always remembered the 
gentle, flaxen-haired schoolmate with much interest, and often won- 
dered what became of him ; and when the ' Log Cabin ' appeared, 
I took much pains to assure myself wliether this Horace Greeley 
was the same little Horace grown up, and found it was." 

From his sixth year, Horace resided chiefly at his father's house. 
He was now old enough to walk to the nearest school-house, a mile 
and a half from his home. He could read fluently, spell any word 
in the language ; had some knowledge of geography, and a little of 
arithmetic ; had read the Bible through from Genesis to Reveh\- 
tions ; had -read the Pilgrim's Progress with intense interest, and 
dipped into every other book he could lay his hands on. From his 
sixth to his tenth year, he lived, worked, read and went to school, 
in Amherst and the adjoining town of Bedford. Those who were 
then his neighbors and schoolmates there, have a lively recollection 
of the boy and his ways. 

Henceforth, he went to school only in the winter. Again he at- 
tended a school which he had no right to attend, that of Bedford, 
and his attendance was not merely permitted, but sought. The 
school-committee expressly voted, that no pupils from other towno 
should be received at their school, except Horace Greeley alone; 
and, on entering the school, he took his place, young as he was, at 
the head of it, as it were, by acclamation. Nor did his superiority 
ever excite envy or enmity. He bore his honors meekly. Every 
one liked the boy, and took pride in his superiority to themselves. 
All his schoolmates agree in this, that Horace never had an ene- 
my at school. 

The snow lies deep on those New Hampshire hills in the winter, 
and presents a serious obstacle to the younger children in their way 
to the school-house ; nor is it the rarest of disasters, even now, for 
children to be lost in a drift, and frozen to death. (Such a calam- 
ity happened two years ago, within a mile or two ot the old Gree 
ley homestead.) "Many a morning," says one of the neighbors — 
ther. a stout schoolboy, now a sturdy farmer— "many a morning T 



HIS EARLY FONDNESS FOR THE VILLAGE NEWSPAPER. 13 

have carried Horace on my back through tlie drifts to scho®l, and 
put my own mittens over his, to keep his little hands from freez- 
ing " He adds, " I Uved at the next house, and I and my brothers 
often went down in the eveuing to play wiih him ; but he never 
would play with us till he had got his lessons. We could neither 
coax nor force him to." He remembers Horace as a boy of a bright 
and active nature, but neither playful nor merry; one who would 
utter acute and " old-fashioned" remarks, and make more fun for 
others than he seemed to enjoy himself. 

His fondness for reading grew with the growth of his mind, till 
it amounted to a passion. His father's stock of books was small 
indeed. It consisted of a Bible, a " Confession of Faith," and per- 
haps all told, twenty volumes beside; and they by no means of a 
kind calculated to foster a love of reading in the mind of a little 
boy. But a weeMy newspaper came to the house from the village 
of Amherst ; and, except his mother's tales, that newspaper proba- 
bly had more to do with the opening of the boy's mind and the 
tendency of his opinions, than anything else. The family well re- 
member the eagerness with which he anticipated its coming. Pa- 
per-day was the brightest of the week. An hour before the post- 
rider was expected, Horace would walk down the road to meet 
him, bent on having the first read; and when he had got possession 
of the precious sheet, he would hurry with it to some secluded 
place, lie down on the grass, and greedily devour its contents. The 
paper was called (and is still) the Farmer's CaMnet. It was mildly 
Whig in politics. The selections were rehgious, agricultural, and 
miscellaneous ; the editorials few, brief, and amiable ; its summary 
of news scanty in the extreme. But it was the only bearer of tid- 
ings from the Great World. It connected the little brown house on 
the rocky hill of Amherst with the general life of mankind. Tho 
boy, before he could read himself, and before he could understand 
the meaning of war and bloodshed, doubtless heard his father read 
in it of the triumphs and disasters of the Second War with Great 
Britain, and of the rejoicings at the conclusion of peace. He him- 
self may have read of Decatur's gallantry in the war with Algiers, 
of Wellington's victory at Waterloo, of Napoleon's fretting away 
his life on the rock of St. Helena, of Monroe''s inauguration, of the 
dismantling of the fleefs on the great Ukes, of the progiess of tho 



14 EARLY CHILDHOOD. 

^ne Canal project, of Jackson's inroads into Florida, and the subse- 
quent cession of that province to the Uni,;ed States, of the first 
meeting of Congress in the Capitol, of the passage of the Missouri 
Compromise. During the progress of the various commercial trea- 
ties with the States of Europe, which were negotiated after the 
conclusion of the general peace, the whole theory, practice, and his- 
tory of commercial intercourse, were amply discussed in Congress 
ani the newspapers ; and the niind of Horace, even in his ninth 
year, was mature enough to take some interest in the subject, and 
derive some impressions from its discussion. The Farmefs Cabinet, 
which brought all these and countless othei ideas and events to 
bear on the education of the boy, is now one of the thousand pa- 
pers with which the Tribune exchanges. 

Horace scoured the country for books. Books were books in that 
remote and secluded region ; and when he had exhausted the col- 
lections of the neighbors, he carried the search into the neighbor- 
ing towns. I am assured that there was not one readable book 
within seven miles of his father's house, which Horace did not bor- 
row and read during his residence in Amherst. He was never 
without a book. As soon, says one of his sisters, as he was dressed 
in the morning, he flew to his book. He read every minute of the 
day which he could snatch from his studies at school, and on the 
farm. He would be so absorbed in his reading, that when his pa- 
rents required his services, it was like rousing a heavy sleeper from 
his deepest sleep, to awaken Horace to a sense of things around 
him and an apprehension of the duty required of him. And even 
then he clung to his book. He would go reading to the cellar and 
the cider-barrel, reading to the wood-pile, reading to the garden, 
reading to the neighbors ; and pocketing his book only long enough 
to perform his errand, he w^ould fall to reading again the instant his 
mind and his hands were at liberty. 

He kept in a secure place an ample supply of pine knots, and as 
Boon as it was dark he would light one of these cheap and brilliant 
illuminators, put it on the back -log in the spacious fire-place, pile 
up his school books and his reading books on the floor, lie down on 
his back on the hearth, with his head to the fire and his feet coiled 
away out of the reach of stumblers ; and there he would lie and 
read all through the long winter evenings, silent, motionless, dead 



SCOURS THE COUNTRY FOR BOOKS. 15 

to the world around liim, alive only to tl.e world to which he was 
transported by Ins book. Visitors would come in, chat a while, 
and go away, without knowing he was present, and without his 
being aware of their coming and going. It was a nightly struggle 
to get him to bed. His father required his services early in the 
morning, and was therefore desirous that he should go to bed early 
in the evening. He feared, also, for the eye-sight of the boy, read- 
ing so many hours with his head in the fire and by the flaring, flicker- 
ing hght of a pine knot. And so, by nine o'clock, his father would 
begin the task of recalling the absent mind from its roving, and 
rousing the prostrate and dormant body. And when Horace at 
length had been forced to beat a retreat, he kept his younger 
brother awake by telling over to him in bed what he had read, and 
by reciting the school lessons of the next day. His brother was by 
no means of a literary turn, and was prone — much -to the chagrin 
of Horace — to fall asleep long before the lessons were all said and 
the tales all told. 

So entire and pasoionate a devotion to the acquisition of knowl- 
edge in one so young, would be remarkable in any circumstances. 
But when the situation of the boy is considered — living in a remote 
and eery rural district — few books accessible — few literary persons re- 
siding near — the school contributing scarcely anything to his mental 
nourishment — no other boy in the neighborhood manifesting any 
particular interest in learning — the people about hira all engaged in 
a rude and hard struggle to extract the means of subsistence from 
a rough and rocky soil — such an intense, absorbing, and persistent 
love of knowledge as that exhibited by Horace Greeley, must be 
accounted very extraordinary. 

That his neighbors so accounted it, they are still eager to attest. 
Continually the wonder grew, that one small head should carry all 
he knew. 

There were not wanting those who thought that superior means 
of instruction ought to be placed within the reach of so superior 
a child. I have a somewhat vague, but very positive, and fully con- 
firmed story, of a young man j'lst returned from college to his 
father's house in Bedford, who fell in with Horace, and was so 
struck with his capacity and attainments that he offered to send 
him to an academy in a neighboring town, and bear all the ex- 



IG EARLY CHILDHOOD. 

penses of his maintenance and tuition. But liis mother could not 
let him go, his father needed his assistance at home, and the boy 
himself is said not to have favored the scheme. A wise, a fortunate 
choice, I cannot help believing. That academ}' may have been an 
institution where boys received more good than harm — where real 
hnoicledge was imparted — where souls were inspired with the love 
of high and good things, and inflamed with an ambition to run a 
high and good career — where boys did not lose all their modesty 
and half their sense — where chests were expanded — where 
cheeks were ruddy — where limbs were active — where stomachs 
were peptic. It may have been. But if it was, it was a different 
academy from many whose praises are in all the newspapers. It 
was better not to run the risk. If that young man's offe** had been 
accepted, it is a question whether the world would have ever heard 
of Horace Greeley. Probably his fragile body would not have sus- 
tained the brain-stimulating treatment which a forward and eager 
boy generally receives at an academy. 

A better friend, though not a better meaning one, was a jovial 
neighbor, a sea-captain, who had taken to farming. The captain 
had seen the world, possessed the yarn-spinning faculty, and be- 
sides being himself a walking traveler's library, had a considerable 
collection of books, which he freely lent to Horace. His salute, on 
meeting the boy, was not 'How do you do, Horace?' but 'Well, 
Horace, what's the capital of Turkey V or, ' "Who fought the battle 
of Eutaw Springs?' or, 'How do you spell Encyclopedia, or Kamt- 
schatka, or Nebuchadnezzar V The old gentleman used to question 
the boy upon the contents of the books he had lent him, and was 
again and again surprised at the fluency, the accuracy, and the full- 
ness of his replies. The captain was of service to Horace in vari- 
ous ways, and he is remembered by the family with gratitude. To 
Horace's brother he once gave a sheep and a load of hay to keep it 
on during the winter, thus adapting his benefactions to the various 
tastes of his juvenile friends. 

A clergyman, too, is spoken of, who took great interest in Horace, 
and gave him instruction in grammar, often giving the boy er- 
roneous information to test his knowledge. Horace, he used to 
say, could never be shaken on a point which he had once clearly 
understood, but would stand to bis opinion, and defend it against 
anybody and everybody — teacher, pastor, or public opinion. 



HIS WAY OF FISIIING. 



17 



In New England, the sons of farmers begin to make themselves 
useful almost as soon as they can walk. They feed the chickens, 
they drive the cows, they bring in wood and water, and soon come 
to perform all those offices which come under the denomination of 
" chores.^'' By the time they are eight or nine years old, they fre- 
quently have tasks assigned them, which are called " stints," and 
not till they have done their stint are they at liberty to play. 
The reader may think that Horace's devotion to literature would 
naturally enough render the farm work distasteful to him ; an'^ if 
he had gone to the academy, it might. I am bound, however, to 
say that all who knew him in boyhood, agree that he was not more 
devoted to study in his leisure hours, than he was faithful and assid- 
uous in performing his duty to his father during the hours of work. 
Faithful is the word. He could be trusted any where, and to do 
anything within the compass of his strength and years. It was 
hard, sometimes, to rouse him from his books ; but when he had 
been roused, and was entrusted with an errand or a piece of work, 
he would set about it vigorously, and lose no time till it was done. 
" Come," his brother would say sometimes, when the father had 
set the boys a task and had gone from home ; " come, Hod, let's go 
fishing." " No," Horace would reply, in bis whining voice, " let 
us do our stint first." '' He was always in school, though," says his 
brother, " and as we hoed down the rows, or chopped at the wood- 
pile, he was perpetually talking about his lessons, asking questions, 
and narrating what he had read." 

Fishing, it appears, was the only sport in which Horace took 
much pleasure, during the first ten years of his life. But his love 
of fishing did not originate in what the Germans call the "sport 
impulse." Other boys fished for sport; Horaoe fished for j/?s7i. He 
fished industriously^ keeping his eyes uriceasingly on the fioat, and 
never distracting his own attention, or that of the fish, by convers- 
ing with his companions. The consequence was that he would 
often catch more than all the rest of the party put together. Shoot 
ing was the favorite amusement of the boys of the neighborhood, 
but Horace could rarely be persuaded to take part in it. When 
he did accompany a shooting-party, he would never carry or dis- 
charge a gun, and when the game was found he would lie down 
and stop his ears till the murder had been done. 
2 



CHAPTER II. 

HIS FATHER RUINED — REMOVAL TO VERMONT. 

New [Jampshire before the era of manufactures— Causes of his father's failure-Rum 
lU the olden time— An execution in the house— Flight of the father— Horace and 
the Rum Jug — Compromise with the creditors — Removal to another farm — Fi- 
nal ruin— Removal to Vermont — The winter journey — Poverty of the family — 
Scene at their new home— Cheerfulness in misfortune. 

But while thus Horace was growing up to meet his destiny, 
pressing forward on the rural road to learning, and secreting char- 
acter in that secluded home, a cloud, undiscerned by him, had come 
over his father's prospects. It began to gather when the boy was 
little more than six years old. In his seventh year it broke, and 
drove the family, for a time, from house and land. In his tenth, it 
had completed its work — his father was a ruined man, an exile, a 
fugitive from his native State. 

In those days, before the great manufacturing towns which now 
afford the farmer a market for his produce had sprung into exist- 
ence along the shores of the Merrimac, before a net-work of rail- 
roads regulated the price of grain in the barns of New Hampshire 
by the standard of Mark Lane, a farmer of New Hampshire was 
not, in his best estate, very far from ruin. Some articles which 
forty years ago were quite destitute of pecuniary value, now afford 
an ample profit. Fire-wood, for example, when Horace Greeley 
was a boy, could seldom be sold at any price. It was usually 
burned up on the land on which it grew, as a worthless incumbrance. 
Fire-wood now, in the city of Manchester, sells for six dollars a 
cord, and at any point within ten miles of Manchester for four dol- 
lars. Forty years ago, farmers had little surplus produce, and that 
little had to be carried far, and it brought little money home. In 
short, before the manufacturing system was introduced into New 
Hampshire, affording employment to her daughters in the factory, 
to her sons on the land, New Hampshire was a poverty-stricken 

State. 

18 



CAUSES (/T HIS FATHER'S FAILURE. 19 

It is one of the wonders of party infatuation, that the two States 
which if they have not gained most, have certainly most to gain 
from the " American system," should have always been, and should 
still be its most rooted opponents. But man the partisan, hke man 
the sectarian, is, always was, and will ever be, a poor creature. 

The way to thrive in New Hampshire was to work very hard 
keep the store-bill small, stick to the farm, and be no man's security. 
Of these four things, Horace's father did only one — he worked hard. 
He was a good workman, methodical, skillful, and persevering. 
But he speculated in lumber, and lost money by it. He was ' bound,' 
as they say in the country, for another man, and had to pay the 
money which that other man failed to pay. He had a free and 
generous nature, lived well, treated the men whom he employed 
Uberally, and in various ways swelled his account with the store- 
keeper. 

Those, to^, were the jolly, bad days, when everybody drank 
strong drinks, and no one supposed that the affairs of life could pos- 
sibly be transacted without its agency, any more than a machine 
could go without the lubricating oil. A field could not be ' logged,' 
hay could not be got in, a harvest could not be gathered, unless the 
jug of liquor stood by the spring, and unless the spring was visited 
many times in the day by all hands. No visitor could be sent un- 
moistened away. No holiday could be celebrated without drinking- 
booths. At weddings, at christenings, at funerals, rum seemed to 
be the inducement that brought, and the tie that bound, the com- 
pany together. It was rum that cemented friendship, and rum that 
clinched bargains; rum that kept out tlie cold of winter, and rum 
that moderated the summer's heat. Men drank it, women drank 
it, children drank it. There were families in which the first duty 
of every morning was to serve around to all its members, even to 
the youngest child, a certain portion of alcoholic liquor. Rum had 
to be bought with money, and money was hard to get in New 
Hampshire, Zaccheus Greeley was not the man to stint his work- 
men. At his house and on his farm the jug was never empty. In 
his cellar the cider never was out. And so, by losses wliich he 
could not help, by practices which had not yet been discovered to 
be unnecessary, his affairs became disordered, and he began i«. 
descend the easy steep that leads to the abyss of bankruptcy. He 



20 



HIS FATHER RUINED. REMOVAL TO VERMONT. 



arrived — lingered a few years ou the edge — was pushed in — and 
scrambled out on the other side. 

It was on a Monday morning. There had been a long, fierce 
rain, and the clouds still hung heavy and dark over the hills. 
Horace, then only nine years old, on coming down stairs in the 
morning, saw several men about the house ; neighbors, some of 
them ; others were strangers ; others he had seen in the village. 
He was too young to know the nature of an Execution, and by what 
right the sheriff and a party of men laid hands upon his father's 
property. His father had walked quietly off into the woods ; for, 
at that period, a man's person was not exempt from seizure. Horace 
had a vague idea that the men had come to rob them of all they 
possessed ; and wild stories are afloat in the neighborhood, of the 
boy*8 conduct on the occasion. Some say, that he seized a hatchet, 
ran to the neighboring field, and began furiously to cut down a fa- 
vorite pear-tree, saying, " They shall not have that^ anyhow." But 
his mother called him off, and the pear-tree still stands. Another 
story is, that he went to one of his mother's closets, and taking as 
many of her dresses as he could grasp in his arms, ran away with 
them into the woods, hid them behind a rock, and then came back 
to the house for more. Others assert, that the article carried off 
by the indignant boy was not dresses, but a gallon of rum. But 
whatever the boy did, or left undone, the reader may imagine that 
it was to all the family a day of confusion, anguish, and horror. 
Both of Horace's parents were persons of incorruptible honesty; 
they had striven hard to place such a calamity as this far from their 
house ; they had never experienced themselves, nor witnessed at 
their earlier homes, a similar scene; the blow was unexpected; and 
mingled with their sense of shame at being publicly degraded, was 
a feeling of honest rage at the supposed injustice of so summary a 
proceeding. It was a dark day; but it passed, as the darkest day 
will. 

An " arrangement" was made with the creditors. Mr. Greeley 
gave up his own farm, temporarily, and removed to another in the 
adjoining town of Bedford, which he cultivated on shares, and de- 
voted principally to the raising of hops. Misfortune still pursued 
him. His two years' experience of hop-growing was not satisfac- 
tory. The hop-market was depressed. His own farm in Amherst 



BEGINNING THE WORLD ANEW. 21 

was eithei ill managed or else the seasons were unfavorable. He 
gave up the hop-farm, poorer than ever. He removed back to his 
old home in Amherst. A little legal maneuvering or rascality on 
the part of a creditor, gave the finishing blow to his fortunes ; and, 
in the winter of 1821, he gave up the effort to recover himself, be- 
came a bankrupt, was sold out of house, land, and household goods 
by the sheriff, and fled from the State to avoid arrest, leaving his 
family behind. Horace was nearly ten years old. Some of the 
debts then left unpaid, he discharged in part thirty years after. 

Mr. Greeley had to begin the world anew, and the world was all 
before him, where to choose, excepting only that portion of it which 
is included within the boundaries of New Hampshire. He made hia 
way, after some wandering, to the town of Westhaven, in Rutland 
county, Vermont, about a hundred and twenty miles northwest of 
his former residence. There he found a large landed proprietor, 
who had made one fortune in Boston as a merchant, and married 
another in "Westhaven, the latter consisting of an extensive tract 
of land. He had now retired from business, had set up for a coun- 
try gentleman, was clearing his lands, and when they were cleared 
he rented them out in farms. This attempt to " found an estate," 
in the European style, signally failed. The " mansion house" has 
been disseminated over the neighborhood, one wing here, another 
wing there ; the " lawn" is untrimmed ; the attempt at a park-gate 
Las lost enough of the paint that made it tawdry once, to look 
shabby now. But this gentleman was useful to Zaccheus Greeley 
in the day of his poverty. He gave him work, rented him a small 
house nearly opposite the park-gate just mentioned, and thus en- 
abled him in a few weeks to transport his family to a new home. 

It was in the depth of winter when they made the journey. The 
teamster that drove them still lives to tell how ' old Zac Greeley 
came to him, and wanted he should take his sleigh and horses, and 
go over with him to New Hampshire State, and bring his family 
back ;' and how, when they had got a few miles on the way, he said 
to Zac, said he, that he (Zac) was a stranger to him, and he did n't 
feel like going so far without enough to secure him ; and so Zac 
gave him enough to secure him, and away they drove to New 
Hampshire State. One sleigh was sufficient to convey all the little 
property the law had left the family, and the load could not have 



22 HIS FATHER RUINED. REMOVAL TO VERMONT. 

been a heavy one, for the distance was accomplished in a little less 
than three days. The sleighing, however, was good, and the Con- 
necticut river was crossed on the ice. The teamster remembers 
well the intelligent, white-headed boy who was so pressing with his 
questions, as they rode along over the snow, and who soon exhaust- 
ed the man's knowledge of the geography of the region in which 
he had lived all his days. " He asked me," says he, "a great dea. 
about Lake Champlain, and how far it was from Plattsburgh to this, 

that, and t' other place ; but, Lord ! he told me a d d sight more 

than i could tell Am." The passengers in the sleigh were Horace, 
his parents, his brother, and two sisters, and all arrived safely at the 
little house in Westhaven, — safely, but very, very poor. They pos- 
sessed the clothes they wore on their journey, a bed or two, a few 
— very few— domestic utensils, an antique chest, and one or two 
other small relics of their former state ; and they possessed nothing 
more. 

A lady, who was then a little girl, and, as little girls in the coun- 
try will, used to run in and out of the neighbors' houses at all hours 
without ceremony, tells me that, many times, during that winter 
she saw the newly-arrived family taking sustenance in the follow 
ing manner : — A five-quart milk-pan filled with bean porridge- -aii 
hereditary dish among the Scotch-Irish — was placed upon the floor, 
the children clustering around it. Each child was provided with a 
spoon, and dipped into the porridge, the spoon going directly from 
the common dish to the particular mouth, without an intermediate 
landing upon a plate, the meal consisting of porridge, and porridge 
only. The parents sat at a table, and enjoyed the dignity of a sep- 
arate dish. This was a homely way of dining ; but, adds my kind 
informant, " they seemed so happy over their meal, that many a 
time, as I looked upon the group, I wished our mother would let 1/5 
eat in that way — it seemed so much better than sitting at a table 
and using knives, and forks, and plates." There was no repining in 
the family over their altered circumstances, nor any attempt to con- 
ceal the scantiness of their furniture. To what the world calls " ap- 
pearances" they seemed constitutionally insensible. 



CHAPTER III. 

AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. 

Description of the country — Clearing up Land — All the family assist a )a Swiss-Fana- 
ily-Robinaon — Primitive costume of Horace — His early jndiflFerence to dress — Hii 
manner and attitude in school — A Peacemaker among the boys — Gets into a scrape, 
and out of it — Assists his school-fellows in their studies — An evening scene at 
home — Horace knows too much — Disconcerts his teachers by his questions — Leaves 
school — The pine knots still blaze on the hearth — Reads incessantly — Becomes a 
great draught player— Bee-hunting — Reads at the Mansion House — Taken for an 
Idiot — And for a possible President — Reads Mrs. Hemans with rapture — A Wolf 
Story — A Pedestrian Journey — Horace and the horseman — Yoking the Oxen — 
Scene with an old Soaker — Rum in Westhaven — Horace's First Pledge— Narrow 
escape from drowning — His religious doubts— Becomes a Universalist — Discovers 
the humbug of '' Democracy "—Impatient to begin his apprenticeship. 

The family were gainers in some important particulars, by their 
change of residence. The land was better. The settlement was 
more recent. There was a better chance for a poor man to acquire 
property. And what is well worth mention for its eflfect upon the 
opening mind of Horace, the scenery was grander and more various. 
That part of Rutland county is in nature's large manner. Long 
ranges of hills, with bases not too steep for cultivation, but rising 
into lofty, precipitous and fantastic summits, stretch away in every 
direction. The low-lands are level and fertile. Brooks and rivers 
come out from among the hills, where they have been officiating as 
water-power, and flow down through valleys that open and expand 
to receive them, fertilizing the soil. Roaming among these hills, 
the boy must have come frequently upon little lakes locked in on 
every side, without apparent outlet or inlet, as smooth as a mirror, 
as silent as the grave. Six miles from his father's house was the 
great Lake Champlain. He could not see it from his father's door, 
but he could see the blue mist that rose from its surface every 
morning and evening, f nd hung over it, a cloud veiling a Mystery. 
And he could see the long line of green knoll-like hills that 
formed its opposite -^hore. And he could go down on Sundays to 
the fihore itself, and stand in the immediate presence of the lake. 



24 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. 

Nor is it a slight thing for a boy to see a great natural object which 
he has been learning about in his school books ; nor is it an unin- 
fluential circumstance for him to live where he can see it frequent- 
ly. It was a superb country for a boy to grow up in, whether his 
tendencies were industrial, or sportive, or artistic, or poetical. 
There was rough work enough to do on the land. Fish were 
abundant in the lakes and streams. Game abounded in the woods. 
Wild grapes and wild honey were to be had for the search after 
them. Much of the surrounding scenery is sublime, and what is 
not sublime is beautiful. Moreover, Lake Champlain is a stage on 
the route of northern and southern travel, and living upon its shores 
brought the boy nearer to that world in which he was destined to 
move, and which he had to know before he could work in it to 
advantage. At Westhaven, Horace passed the next five years of 
his life. He was now rather tall for his age ; his mind was far in 
advance of it. Many of the opinions for which he has since done 
battle, were distinctly formed during that important period of his 
life to which the present chapter is devoted. 

At Westhaven, Mr. Greeley, as they say in the country, 
' took jobs ;' and the jobs which he took were of various kinds. 
He would contract to get in a harvest, to prepare the ground 
for a new one, to ' tend ' a saw-mill ; but his principal employ- 
ment was clearing up land ; that is, piling up and burning the trees 
after they had been felled. After a time he kept sheep and cat- 
tle. In most of his undertakings he prospered. By incessant labor 
and by reducing his expenditures to the lowest possible point, he 
saved money, slowly but continuously. 

In whatever he engaged, whether it was haying, harvesting, 
sawing, or land-clearing, he was assisted by all his family. There 
was little work to do at home, and after breakfast, the house was 
left to take care of itself, and away went the family, father, mother, 
boys, girls, and oxen, to work together. Clearing land offers an 
excellent field for family labor, as it affords work adapted to all de- 
grees of strength. The father chopped the larger logs, and direct- 
ed the labor of all the company. Horace drove the oxen, and 
drove them none too well, say the neighbors, and was gradually 
supplanted in the office of driver by his younger brother. Both 
the boys could chop the smaller trees. Their mother and sisters 



PRIMITIVE COSTUME OF HORACE. 25 

gathered together the light wood into heaps. And when the 
^reat logs had to be rolled upon one another, there was scope for 
ehe combined skill and strength of the wliole party. Many happy 
and merry days the family spent together in this employment. 
The mother's spirit never flagged. Her voice rose in song and 
laughter from the tangled brush-wood in which she was often bur- 
ied; and no word, discordant or unkind, was ever known to 
break the perfect harmony, to interrupt the perfect good humor 
that prevailed in the family. At night, they went home to the 
most primitive of suppers, and partook of it in the picturesque and 
labor-saving style in which the dinner before alluded to was con- 
sumed. The neighbors still point out a tract of fifty acres which 
was cleared in this sportive and Swiss-Family-Robinson-like man- 
ner. They show the spring on the side of the road where the fam- 
ily used to stop and drink on their way ; and they show a hem- 
lock-tree, growing from the rocks above the spring, which used 
to furnish the brooms, weekly renewed, which swept the little 
liouse in which the little family lived. To complete the picture, 
imagine them all clad in the same material, the coarsest kind of 
linen or linsey-woolsey, home-spun, dyed with butternut bark, 
and the different garments made in the roughest and simplest man- 
ner by the mother. 

More than three garments at the same time, Horace seldom wore in 
the summer, and these were — a straw hat, generally in a state of 
dilapidation, a tow-shirt, never buttoned, a pair of trousers made of 
the family material, and having the peculiarity of being very short 
in both legs, but shorter in one than the other. In the winter he 
added a pair of shoes aij« a jacket. During the five years of his 
life at Westhaven, probably is clothes did not cost three dollars a 
year ; and, I believe, that duriu. the whole period of his childhood, 
up to the time when he came ol .ee, not fifty dollars in all were 
expended upon his dress. He never Manifested, on any occasion, in 
any company, nor at any part of his eai 'v life, the slightest interest 
in hia attire, nor the least care for its effect upon others. That 
amiable trait in human nature which inclines us to decoration, 
which make us desirous to present an agreeable figure to others, 
and to abhor peculiarity in our appearance, is a trait which Horace 
never gave the smallest evidence of possessing. 



26 ^T WESTHAVEN, ^-ERMONT. 

He went to school three winters in Westhaven, but not to anj 
great advantage. He had ah'eady gone the round of district schooi 
studies, and did little more after his tenth year than walk over the 
course, keeping lengths ahead of all competitors, with little effort- 
*' He w^as always," says one of his Westhaven schoolmates, " at 
the top of the school. He seldom had a teacher that could teach 
him anything. Once, and once only, he missed a word. His fair 
face was crimsoned in an instant. He was terribly cut about it, and 
I fancied he was not himself for a week after. I see him now, as 
he sat in class, with his slender body, his large head, his open, 
ample forehead, his pleasant smile, and his coarse, clean, homespun 
clothes. His attitude was always the same. He sat with his arms 
loosely folded, his head bent forward, his legs crossed, and one foot 
swinging. He did not seem to pay attention, but nothing escaped 
him. He appeared to attend more from curiosity to hear what sort of 
work we made of the lesson than from any interest he took in the 
subject for his own sake. Once, I parsed a word egregiously wrong, 
and Horace was so taken aback by the mistake that he was startled 
from his propriety, and exclaimed, loud enough for the class to hear 
him, ' WTiat a fool !' The manner of it was so ludicrous that I, and 
all the class, burst into laughter." 

Another schoolmate remembers him chiefly for his gentle manner 
and obliging disposition. " I never," she says, "knew liim to fight, 
or to be angry, or to have an enemy. He was a peacemaker among 
us. He played with the boys sometimes, and I think was fonder 
of snowballing than any other game. For girls, as girls, he never 
manifested any preference. On one occasion he got into a scrape. 
He had broken some petty rule of the school, and was required, as 
a punishment, to inflict a certain number of blows upon another 
boy, who had, I think, been a participator in the offense. The in- 
strument of flagellation was placed in Horace's hand, and he drew 
off, as though he was going to deal a terrific blow, but it came 
down so gently on the boy's jacket that every one saw that Horace 
was shamming. The teacher interfered, and told him to strike 
harder; and a little harder he did strike, but a more harmless flog- 
ging was never administered. He seemed not to have the power 
any more than the will, to inflict pain." 

If Horace got little good himself from his last winters at school 



DISCONCERTS HIS TEACHERS. 27 

he was of great assistance to bis schoolfellows in explaining to them 
the difficulties of their lessons. Few evenings passed in which 
Bome strapping fellow did not come to the house with his grammar 
or his slate, and sit demurely by the side of Horace, while the dis- 
tracting sum was explained, or the dark place in tbe parsing les- 
son illuminated. The boy delighted to render such assistance. 
However deeply he might be absorbed in his own studies, as soon 
as he saw a puzzled countenance peering in at the door, he knew 
his man, knew what was wanted ; and would jump up from hi? 
recumbent posture in the chimney-corner, and proceed, with a 
patience that is still gratefully remembered, with a perspicuity that 
is still mentioned with admiration, to impart the information re- 
quired of him. Fancy it. It is a pretty picture. The ' little white- 
headed fellow ' generally so abstracted, now all intelligence and ani- 
mation, by the side of a great hulk of a young man, twice his age 
and three times his weight, with a countenance expressing perplex- 
ity and despair. An apt question, a reminding word, a few figures 
hastily scratched on the slate, and light flashes on the puzzled mind. 
He wonders he had not thought of that : he wishes Heaven had 
given Mm such a ' head-piece.' 

To some of his teachers at Westhaven, Horace was a cause of 
great annoyance. He knew too much. He asked awkward ques- 
tions. He was not to be put off with common-place solutions of 
serious difficulties. He wanted things to hang together, and liked 
to know how, if this was true, that could be true also. At length, 
one of his teachers, when Horace was thirte^i years old, had the 
honesty and good sense to go to his father, and say to him, point 
blank, that Horace knew more than he did, and it was of no use for 
him to go to school any more. So Horace remained at home, read 
hard all that winter in a little room by himself, and taught hia 
youngest sister beside. He had attended district school, altogether, 
about forty-five mouths. 

At Westhaven, the pine-knots blazed on the hearth as brightly 
and as continuously as they had done at the old home in Amherst. 
There was a new reason wliy they should ; for a candle was a lux- 
ury now, too expensive to be indulged in. Horace's home was a 
favorite evening resort for the children of the neighborhood — a fact 
which says much for the kindly spirit of its inmates. They came 



28 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. 

to hear his mother's songs and stories, to play with his brother and 
sisters, to get assistance from himself; and they liked to be there, 
where there was no stiffness, nor ceremony, nor discord. Horace 
cared nothing for their noise and romping, but he could never be 
induced to join in an active game. When he was not assisting 
some bewildered arithmetician, he lay in the old position, on his 
back in the fireplace, reading, always reading. The boys would 
hide his book, but he would get another. They would pull him out 
of his fiery den by the leg ; and he would crawl back, without tlie 
least show of anger, but without the slightest inclination to yield 
the point. 

There was a game, however, which could sometimes tempt him 
from his book, and of which he gradually became excessively fond. 
It was draughts, or 'checkers.' In that game he acquired extraor- 
dinary skill, beating everybody in the neighborhood ; and before he 
had reached maturity, there were few draught-players in the coun- 
try — if any — who could win two games in three of Horace Greeley. 
His cronies at Westhaven seem to have been those who were fond 
of draughts. In his passion for books, he was alone among his 
companions, who attributed his continual reading more to indolence 
than to his acknowledged superiority of intelligence. It was often 
predicted that, whoever else might prosper, Horace never would. 

And yet, he gave proof, in very early life, that the Yankee ele- 
ment was strong within him. In the first place, he was always do- 
ing something; and, in the second, he always had something to sell. 
He saved nuts, and exchanged them at the store for the articles he 
wished to purchase. He would hack away, hours at a time, at a 
pitch-pine stump, the roots of which are as inflammable as pitch 
itself, and, tying up the roots in little bundles, and the little bundles 
into one large one, he would. " back" the load to the store, and sell 
it for kindling wood. His favorite out-door sport, too, at West- 
haven, was bee-hunting, which is not only an agreeable and excit- 
ing pastime, but occasionally rewards the hunter with a prodigious 
mass of honey — as much as a hundred and fifty pounds having been 
frequently obtained from a single tree. This was profitable sport, 
and Horace liked it amazingly. His share of the honey generally 
found its way to the store. By these and other expedients, the boy 
managed always to have a little money, and when a peddler came 



TAKEN FOR AN IDIOT. 29 

along with books in his wagon, Horace was pretty sure to be hig 
customer. Yet he was only half a Yankee. He could earn money, 
>ut the bargaining faculty he had not. 

What did he read ? Whatever he could get. But his preference 
was for history, poetry, and — newspapers. He had read, as I have 
before mentioned, the whole Bible before he was six years old. 
He read the Arabian Nights with intense pleasure in his eighth 
year ; Robinson Crusoe in his nintli ; Shakspeare in his eleventh ; 
in his twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years, he read a good 
many of the common, superficial histories — Robertson's, Gold- 
smith's, and others — and as many tales and romances as he could 
borrow. At Westhaven, as at Amherst, he roamed far and wide 
in search of books. He was fortunate, too, in living near the 
' mansion-house' before mentioned, the proprietor of which, it ap- 
pears, took some interest in Horace, freely lent him books, and 
allowed him to come to the house and read there as often and as 
long as he chose. 

A story is told by one who lived at the ' mansion-house' when 
Horace used to read there Horace entered the library one day, 
when the master of the house happened to be present, in conversa- 
tion with a stranger. The stranger, struck with the awkwardness 
and singular appearance of the boy, took him for little better than 
an idiot, and was inclined to laugh at the idea of lending books to 
* such a fellow as that.^ The owner of the mansion defended his 
conduct by extolling the intelligence of his protege, and wound up 
with the usual climax, that he should " not be surprised, sir, if that 
boy should come to be President of the United States." People in 
those days had a high respect for the presidential office, and really 
believed — many of them did — that to get the highest place it was 
only necessary to be the greatest man. Hence it was a very com- 
mon mode of praising a boy, to make the safe assertion that he 
mighty one day, if he persevered in well-doing, be the President of 
the United States. That was before the era of wire-pulling and 
rotation in office. He must be either a very young or a very old 
man who can now mention the presidential office in connection 
with the future of any boy not extraordinarily vicious. Wire-pull- 
ing, happily, has robbed the schoolmasters of one of their bad argu- 
merts for a virtuous life. But we are wandering from the library. 



30 ^ AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. 

The end of the story is, that the stranger looked as if he thought 
Horace's defender half mad liimself; and, "to tell the truth," said 

the lady who told me the story, "we all thought Mr. had made 

a crazy speech," Horace does not appear to have made a favorable 
impression at the ' mansion-house.' 

But he read the books in it, for all that. Perhaps it was there, 
that he fell in with a copy of Mrs. Hemans' poems, which, wher- 
ever he found them, were the first poems that awakened his enthu- 
siasm, the first writings that made him aware of the better impulses 
of his nature. "I remember," he wrote in the Rose of Sharon for 
1841, "as of yesterday, the gradual unfolding of the exceeding 
truthfulness and beauty, the profound heart-knowledge (to coin a 
Germanism) which characterizes Mrs. Hemans' poems, upon my 
own immature, unfolding mind. — ' Oassabianca,' 'Things that 
change,' 'The Voice of Spring,' 'The Traveler at the Source of 
the Nile,' ' The Wreck,' and many other poems of kindred nature 
are enshrined in countless hearts — especially of those whose intel- 
lectual existence dates its commencement between 1820 and 1830 — 
as gems of priceless value; as spirit-wands, by whose electric touch 
they were first made conscious of the diviner aspirations, the loft- 
ier, holier energies within them." 

Such a testimony as this may teach the reader, if he needs the 
lesson, not to undervalue the authors whom his fastidious taste 
may place among the Lesser Lights of Literature. To you, fastid- 
ious reader, those authors may have little to impart. But among 
the hills in the country, where the feelings are fresher, and minds 
are unsated by literary sweets, there may be many a thoughtful boy 
and earnest man, to whom your Lesser Lights are Suns that warm, 
illumine, and quicken! 

The incidents in Horace's life at TVesthaven were few, and of the 
few that did occur, several have doubtless been forgotten. The 
people there remember him vividly enough, and are profuse in im- 
parting their general impressions of his character; but the facta 
which gave rise to those impressions have mostly escaped their 
memories. They speak of him as an absorbed boy, who rarely 
saluted or saw a passer-by — who would walk miles at the road-side, 
following the zig-zag of the fences, without once looking up — who 
was often taken by strangers for a natural fool, but was known b^ 



A WOLF STORY. 31 

nis intimates to be, in the language of one of them — " a darned 
smart fellow, in spite of his looks " — who was utterly blameless in 
all his ways, and works, and words — who had not, and could not 
have had, an enemy, because nature, by leaving out of his compo- 
sition the diabolic element, had made it impossible for him to be 
one. The few occurrences of the boy's life, which, in addition to 
tliese general reminiscences of his character, have chanced to escape 
oblivion, may as well be narrated here. 

As an instance of his nervous timidity, a lady mentions, that 
when he was about eleven years old, he came to her house one even- 
ing on some errand, and staid till after dark. He started for home, 
at length, but had not been gone many minutes before he burst into 
the house again, in great agitation, saying he had seen a wolf by 
the side of the road. There had been rumors of wolves in the 
neighborhood. Horace declared he had seen the eyes of one glar- 
ing upon him as he passed, and he was so overcome with terror, 
that two of the elder girls of the fiimily accompanied him home. 
They saw no wolf, nor were there any wolves about at the time; 
the mistake probably arose from some phosphorescent wood, or 
some other bright object. A Vermont boy of that period, as a gen- 
eral thing, cared little more for a wolf than a New York boy does 
for a cat, and could have faced a pack of wolves with far less dread 
than a company of strangers. Horace was never abashed by an 
audience; but two glaring eye-balls among the brush-wood sent 
him flying with terror. 

In nothing are mortals more wise than in their fears. That which 
we stigmatize as cowardice — what is it but nature's kindly warning 
to her children, not to confront what they cannot master, and not 
to undertake what their strength is unequal to? Horace was a 
match for a rustic auditory, and he feared it not. He was not a 
match for a wild beast ; so he ran away. Considerate nature ! 

Horace, all through his boyhood, kept his object of becoming a 
printer steadily in view; and soon after coming to Vermont, about 
his eleventh year, he began to think it time for him to take a step 
towards the fulfillment of his intention. He talked to his father on 
the subject, but received no encouragement from him. His father 
said, and very truly, that no one would take an apprentice so young. 
But the boy was not satisfied ; and, one morning, he trudged off to 



32 AT WESTHAVEN, VftRMONT. 

Wliitehall, a town about nine miles distant, where a newspaper was 
published, to make inquiries. He went to the printing office, saw 
the printer, and learned that his father was right. He was too 
young, the printer said ; and so the boy trudged home again. 

A few months after, he went on another and much longer pedes- 
trian expedition. He started, with seventy-five cents in his pocket 
and a small bundle of provisions on a stick over his shoulder, to 
walk to Londonderry, a hundred and twenty miles distant, to see 
his old friends and relatives. He performed tlie journey, staid sev- 
ral weeks, and came back with a shilling or two more money than 
he took with him — owing, we may infer, to the amiable way aunts 
and uncles have of bestowing small coins upon nephews who visit 
them. His re-appearance in New Hampshire excited unbounded 
astonishment, his age and dimensions seeming ludicrously out of 
proportion to the length and manner of liis solitary journey. He 
was made much of during his stay, and his journey is still spoke.n 
of there as a wonderful performance, only exceeded, in fact, by 
Horace's second return to Londonderry a year or two after, when 
he drove, over the same ground, his aunt and her four children, in 
a 'one-horse wagon,' and drove back again, without the slightest 
accident. 

As a set-off to these marvels, it must be recorded, that on two 
other occasions he was taken for an idiot — once, when he entered 
a store, in one of the brownest of his brown studies, and a stranger 
inquired, "What darn fool is that?" — and a second time, in the 
manner following. He was accustomed to call his father ">&>," 
both in speaking to, and speaking. of him. One day, while Horace 
was chopping wood by the side of the road, a man came up on 
horse-back and inquired the way to a distant town. Horace could 
not tell him, and, without looking - p, said, " ask >cS'ir," meaning, ask 
father. The stranger, puzzled at this reply, repeated his question, 
and Horace again said, "ask Siry "I am asking," shouted the 
man. "Well, ask A^ir," said Horace, once more. '■'' Aint I asking, 
you — fool?" screamed the man. "But I want you to ask Sh\" said 
Horace. It was of no avail, the man rode away in disgust, and 
inquired at the next tavern " who that tow-headed fool was down 
the road?" 

Tn a similai' absent fit it must have been, that the boy once at* 



TOKINtJ THE OXEN. 33 

tempted, in vain, to yoke the oxen that he had yoked a hundred 
times before without difficulty. To see a small boy yoking a pair 
of oxen is, O City Reader, to behold an amazing exhibition of the 
power of Mind over Matter. The huge beasts need not come under 
the yoke — twenty men could not compel them — but they do come 
under it at Mie beck of a boy that can just stagger under the yoke 
himself, and whom one of the oxen, with one horn and a shake of 
the head, could toss over a hay-stack. The boy, with the yoke on 
his shoulders, and one of the ' bows ' in his hand, marches up to 
the 'off' ox, puts the bow round his neck, thrusts the ends of the 
bow through the holes of the yoke, fastens them there— and one 
ox is his. But the other ! The boy then removes the other bow, 
holds up the end of the yoke, and commands the 'near' ox to 
approach, and 'come under here, sir.' Wonderful to relate! the 
near ox obeys ! He walks slowly up, and takes his place by the 
side of his brother,- as though it were a pleasant thing to pant all 
day before the plough, and he was only too happy to leave the dull 
pasture. But the ox is a creature of habit. If you catch the near 
ox first, and then try to get the off ox to come under the near side 
of the yoke, you will discover that the off ox has an opinion of his 
own. He won't come. This was the mistake which Horace, one 
morning in an absent fit, committed, and the off ox could not be 
brought to deviate from established usage. After much coaxing, 
and, possibly, some vituperation, Horace was about to give it up, 
when his brother chanced to come to the field, who saw at a glance 
what was the matter, and rectified the mistake. "Ah !" his father 
used to say, after Horace had made a display of this kind, "that 
boy will never get along in this world. He'll never know more 
than enough to come in when it rains." 

Another little story is told of the brothers. The younger waii 
throwing stones at a pig that preferred to go in a direction exactly 
contrary to that in which the boys wished to drive him — a com- 
mon case with pigs, et cetera. Horace, who never threw stones at 
pigs, was overheard to saj, "Now, you ought n't to throw stones 
at that hog ; he don't hnow anything." 

The person who heard these words uttered by the boy, is one of 
those bibulant individuals who, in the rural districts, are called 'old 
»i( ikers,' and his face, tobacco-stained, and rubicund with the 



34 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. 

drinks of forty years, gleamed with the light of other days, as h^ 
hiccoughed out the little tale. It may serve to show how the boy 
is remembered in Westhaven, if I add a word or two respecting mj 
interview with this man. I met him on an unfrequented road ; his 
hair was gray, his step was tottering; and thinking it probable he 
might be able to add to my stock of reminiscences, I asked him 
whether he remembered Horace Greeley. He mumbled a few 
words in reply ; but I perceived that he was far gone towards in- 
toxication, and soon drove on. A moment after, I heard a voice call- 
ing behind me. I looked round, and discovered that the voice was 
that of the soaker, who was shouting for me to stop. I alighted 
and went back to him. And now that the idea of my previous 
questions had had time to imprint itself upon his half-torpid brain, 
his tongue was loosened, and he entered into the subject with an 
enthusiasm that seemed for a time to burn up the fumes that had 
stupefied him. He was full of his theme; and, besides confirming 
much that I had already heard, added the story related above, from 
his own recollection. As the tribute of a sot to the champion of 
the Maine-Law, the old man's harangue was highly interesting. 

That part of the town of Westhaven was, thirty years ago, a 
desperate place for drinking. The hamlet in which the family 
lived longer than anywhere else in the neighborhood, has ceased to 
exist, and it decayed principally through the intemperance of its 
inhabitants. Much of the land about it has not been improved in 
the least degree, from what it was when Horace Greeley helped to 
clear it; and drink has absorbed the means and the energy which 
should have been devoted to its improvement. A boy growing up 
in such a place would be likely to become either a drunkard or a 
tee-totaler, according to his organization ; and Horace became the 
latter. It is rather a singular fact, that, though both his parents 
and all their ancestors were accustomed to the habitual and liberal 
use of intoxicating liquors and tobacco, neither Horace nor his 
brother could ever be induced to partake of either. They had a 
constitutional aversion to the taste of bt)th, long before they under- 
stood the nature of the human system well enough to know that 
stimulants of all kinds are necessarily pernicious. Horace was 
therefore a tee-totaler before tee-totalism came up, and he took a 
sort of pledge before the pledge was inverted. It happened one 



NARROW ESCAPE FROM DROWNING. 35 

day that a neighbor stopped to take dinner with the family, and, 
H8 a matter of course, the bottle of rum was brought out for his 
entertainment. Horace, it appears, either tasted a little, or else 
took a disgust at the smell of the stuff, or perhaps was offended at 
the effects which he saw it produce. An idea struck him. He 
said, " Father, what will you give me if I do not drink a drop of 
liquor till I am twenty -one ?" His father, who took the question as 
a joke, answered, "I'll give you a dollar." "It's a bargain," said 
Horace. And it was a bargain, at least on the side of Horace, who 
kept his pledge inviolate, though I have no reason to believe he 
ever received liis dollar. Many were the attempts made by his 
friends, then and afterwards, to induce him to break his resolution, 
and on one occasion they tried to force some liquor into his mouth. 
But from the day on which the conversation given above occurred, 
to this day, he has not knowingly taken into his system any alco- 
holic liquid. 

At Westhaven, Horace incurred the second peril of his life. He 
was nearly strangled in coming into the world ; and, in his thirteenth 
year, he was nearly strangled out of it. The family were then 
living on the banks of the Hubbarton river, a small stream which 
supplied power to the old ' Tryon Sawmill,' which the father, as- 
sisted by his boys, conducted for a year or two. Across the river, 
where it was widened by the dam, there was no bridge, and people 
were accustomed to get over on a floating saw-log, pushing along 
the log by means of a pole. The boys were floating about in the 
fiver one day, when the log on which the younger brother waa 
standing, rolled over, and in went the boy, over head and ears, 
into water deep enough to drown a giraffe. He rose to the surface 
and clung to the bark of the log, but was unable to get upon it 
from the same cause as that which had prevented his standing upon 
it — it would roll. Horace hastened to his assistance. He got upon 
the log to which his brother was clinging, lay down upon it, and 
put down a hand for his brother to grasp. His brother did grasp 
it, and pulled with so much vigor, that the log made another rev- 
olution, and in went Horace. Neither of the boys could swim. 
They clung to the log and screamed for assistance ; but no one hap- 
pened to be near enough to hear them. At length, the younger of 
the drowning pair managed, by climbing over Horace, and sousing 



36 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. 

him completely under the log, to get out. Horace emerged, half* 
drowned, and again hung for life at the rough bark. But the future 
hero of ten thousand paragraphs was not to be drowned in a mill- 
pond ; so the log floated into shallower water, when, by making a 
last, spasmodic eifort, he succeeded in springing up high enough to 
get safely upon its broad back. It was a narrow escape for both ; 
but Horace, with all his reams of articles forming in his head, came 
as near taking a summary departure to that bourn where no 
TEiBtrsTE could have been set up, as a boy could, and yet not go. 
He went dripping home, and recovered from the effects of his ad- 
-^enture in due time. 

This was Horace Greeley's ^rsi experience of 'log-rolling.' It 
was not calculated to make him like it. 

One of the first subjects which the boy seriously considered, and 
perhaps the first upon whicli he arrived at a decided opinion, was 
Religion. And this was the more remarkable from the fact, that 
his education at home was not of a nature to direct his attention 
strongly to the subject. Both of his parents assented to the Ortho- 
dox creed of New England ; his father inheiited a preference for 
the Baptist denomination ; his mother a leaning to the Presbyter- 
ian. But neither were members of a church, Mud neither were par- 
ticularly devout. The father, however, waM somewhat strict in 
certain observances;. He would not allow novels and plays to bo 
read in the house on Sundays, nor an heretical book at any time. 
The family, when they lived near a church, attended it with con- 
siderable regularity — Horace among the rest. Sometimes the fathei 
would require the children to read a ceitain number of chapters in 
the Bible on Sunday. And if the mother — as mothers are apt to 
be — was a little less scrupulous upon such points, and occasionally 
winked at Sunday novel-reading, it certainly did not arise from any 
set disapproval of her husband's strictness. It was merely that she 
was the mother, he the father, of the family. The religious educa- 
tion of Horace was, in short, of a nature to leave his mind, not un- 
biased in favor of orthodoxy — that had been almost impossible in 
New England thirty years ago — but as nearly in equilibrium on the 
subject, in a state as favorable to original inquiry, as the place and 
circumstances of his early life rendered possible. 

There was not in Westha^en one individual who wa.' knowi? to 



THE STORY OF DEMETRIUS. 37 

be a dissenter from the established faith , nor was there any dis- 
senting sect or society in the vicinity ; nor was any periodical of a 
heterodox character taken in the neighborhood; nor did any heret- 
ical works fall in the boy's way till years after his religions opinions 
were settled. Yet, from the age of twelve he began to doubt; 
and at fourteen — to use the pathetic language of one who knew 
him then — " he was little better than a Universalist." 

The theology of the seminary and the theology of the farm-house- 
are two different things. They are as unlike as the discussion of the 
capital punishment question in a debating society is to the dis- 
cussion of the same question among a company of criminals ac- 
cused of murder. The unsophisticated, rural mind meddles not 
with the metaphysics of divinity ; it takes little interest in the 
Foreknowledge and Free-will difficulty, in the Election and Respon- 
sibility problem, and the manifold subtleties connected therewith. 
It grapples with a simpler question: — '' Am I in danger ofbeing 
damned V ' Is it likely that I shall go to hell, and be tormented with 
burning sulphur, and the proximity of a serpent, forever, and ever, 
and ever?' To minds of an ampler and more generous nature, the 
same question presents itself, but in another form : — Is it a fact that 
nearly every individual of the human family will forever fail of at- 
taining the WELFARE of which he was created capable, and be ' lost^^ 
beyond the hope, beyond the possibility of recovery ?' Upon the 
latter form of the inquiry, Horace meditated much, and talked 
often during his thirteenth and fourteenth years. When his com- 
panions urged the orthodox side, he would rather object, but mildly, 
and say with a puzzled look, " It don't seem consistent." 

"While he was in the habit of revolving such thoughts in his mind, 
a circumstance occurred which accelerated his progress towards a 
rejection of the damnation dogma. It was nothing more than hia 
chance reading in a school-book of the history of Demetrius Polior- 
c^tes. The part of the story which bore upon the subject of hia 
thoughts may be out-lined thus: — 

Demetrius, (B. 0. 301,) surnamed Poliorc^tes, besieger of cities^ 
was the son of AntigoFus, one of those generals whom the death 
of Alexander the Great left masters of the world. Demetrius waa 
one of the ' fast ' princes of antiquity, a handsome, brave, IngeD" 



38 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. 

lous man, but vain, rash and dissolute. He and his father ruled 
dver Asia Minor and Syria. Greece was under the sway of Cassander 
and Ptolemy, who had re-established in Athens aristocratic institu- 
tions, and held the Athenians in servitude. Demetrius, who aspired 
to the glory of succoring the distressed, and was not averse to re- 
ducing the power of his enemies, Cassander and Ptolemy, sailed 
to Athens with a fleet of two hundred and fifty ships, expelled the 
garrison and obtained possession of the city. Antigonus had been 
advised to retain possession of Athens, the key of Greece; but he 
rejdied : — "The best and securest of all keys is the friendship of 
the people, and Athens was the watch-tower of the world, from 
whence the torch of his glory would blaze over the earth." Ani- 
mated by such sentiments, his son, Demetrius, on reaching the city, 
had proclaimed that "his fiither, in a happy hour, he hoped, for 
Athens, had sent him to re-instate them in tiieir liberties, and to re- 
store their laws and ancient form of government." The Athen- 
ians received him with acclamations. He performed all that he 
promised, and more. He gave the people a hundred and fifty 
thousand measures of meal, and timber enougli to build a hundred 
galleys. The gratitude of the Athenians was boundless. They be- 
stowed upon Demetrius the title of king and god-protector. They 
erected an altar upon the spot where he had first alighted from his 
chariot. They created a priest in his honor, and decreed that he 
should be recei"»^d in all his future visits as a god. They changed 
the name of the month Munychion to Demetrion^ called the last 
day of every m( nth Demetrius^ and the feasts of Bacchus Demetria. 
" The gods," say3 the good Plutarch, "soon showed how much of- 
fended they wo'-e at these things." Demetrius enjoyed these ex- 
travagant honors for a time, added an Athenian wife to tfie number 
he already possessed, and sailed away to prosecute the war. A sec- 
ond time the Athenians were threatened with the yoke Of Cassander : 
again Demetrius, with a fleet of three hundred and thirty ships, 
came to their deliverance, and again the citizens taxed their ingenu- 
ity to the utmost in devising for their deliverer new honors and more 
piquant pleasures. At length Demetrius, after a career of victory 
fell into misfortune. His domains were invaded, his father was 
slain, the kingdom was dismembered, and Demetrius, with a rem- 
nant of his army, was obliged to fly. Reaching Ephesus in want oi 



THE STORY OF DEMETRIUS. ' 39 

money, he spared the temple filled with treasure ; and fearing hia 
soldiers would plunder it, left the place and embarked for Greece. 
His dependence was upon the Athenians^ with whom he had left hia 
wife, liis ships, and his money. Confidently relying upon their af- 
fection and gratitude, he pursued his voyage with all possible ex- 
pedition as to a secure asylum. But tliejickle Athenians failed Mm 
in his day of need! At the Cyclades, Athenian ambassadors met 
him, and mocked him with the entreaty that he would by no means 
go to Athens, as the people had declared by an edict, that they 
would receive no king into the city ; and as for his wife, he could 
find her at Megare, whither she had been conducted with the re- 
spect due to her rank. Demetrius, who up to that moment had 
b«rne his reverses with calmness, was cut to the heart, and over- 
come by mingled disgust and rage. He was not in a condition to 
avenge the wrong. He expostulated with the Athenians in mod- 
erate terms, and waited only to be joined by his galleys, and turned 
his back upon the ungrateful country. Time passed. Demetrius 
again became powerful. Athens was rent by factions. Availing 
himself of the occasion, the injured king sailed with a consider- 
able fleet to Attica, landed his forces and invested the city, which 
was soon reduced to such extremity of famine that a father and 
son, it is related, fought for the possession of a dead mouse that 
happened to fall from the ceiling of the room in which- they were 
sitting. The Athenians were compelled, at length, to open their 
gates to Demetrius, who marched in with his troops. He com- 
manded all the citizens to assemble in the theater. They obeyed. 
Utterly at his mercy ^ they expected no mercy, felt that they deserved 
no mercy. The theater was surrounded with armed men, and on 
each side of the stage was stationed a body of the king's own 
guards. Demetrius entered by the tragedian's passage, advanced 
across the stage, and confronted the assembled citizens, who await- 
ed in terror to hear the signal for their slaughter. But no such 
"Sgnal was heard. He addressed them in a soft and persuasive 
«ne, complained of their conduct in gentle terms, forgave their in- 
gratitude, took them again into favor, gave the city a hundred thou- 
sand measures of wheat, and promised the re-establishment of their 
Hncient institutions. The people, relieved from their terror, aston- 
ished at their good fortune, and filled with enthusiasm at such 



40 AT WESTHAVEN VERMONT. 

generous forbearance, overwhelmed Demetrius with acclain* 
tions. 

Horace was fascinated by the story. He thought the conduct of 
Demetrius not only magnanimous and humane, but just and politic. 
Sparing the people, misguided by their leaders, seemed to him the 
best way to make them ashamed of their ingratitude, and the best 
way of preventing its recurrence. And he argued, if mercy is best 
and wisest on a small scale, can it be less so on a large ? If a man 
is capable of such lofty magnanimity, may not God be who made 
man capable of it? If, in a human being, revenge and jealousy are 
despicable, petty and vulgar, what impiety is it to attribute such 
feelings to the beneficent Father of the Universe? The sin of the 
Atiienians against Demetrius had every element of enormity. 
Twice he had snatched them from the jaws of ruin. Twice he 
had supplied their dire necessity. Twice he had refused all reward 
except the empty honors they paid to his name and person. He 
had condescended to become one of them by taking a daughter of 
Athens as his wife. He had entrusted his wife, his ships and his 
treasure to their care. Yet in the day of his calamity, when for 
the first time it was in t\i&i\' power to render him a service, when 
he was coming to them with the remnant of his fortune, without a 
doubt of their fidelity, with every reason to suppose that his mis- 
fortunes would render him dearer to them than ever ; then it was 
that they determined to refuse him even an admittance within their 
gates, and sent an embassy to meet him with mockery and sub- 
terfuge. 

Of the offenses committed by man against man, there is one 
which man can seldom lift his soul up to the height of forgiving. 
It is to be shghted in the day of his humiliation by those who 
showed him honor in the time of his prosperity. Yet man can 
forgive even this. Demetrius forgave it; and the nobler and 
greater a man is, the less keen is his sense of personal wrong, the 
less difficult it is for him to forgive. The poodle must show his 
teeth at every passing dog ; the mastiff walks majestic and serene 
through a pack of snarling curs. 

Amid such thoughts as these, the orthodox theory of damnation 
had little chance ; the mind of the boy revolted against it more and 



BECOMES A UNIVERSALIST. 4;! 

more; and the result was, that he became as onr pious friend 
lamented, " little better than a Universahst" — in fact no better. 
From the age of fourteen he was known wherever he lived as a 
champion of Universalism, though he never entered a Universalist 
church till he was twenty years old. By what means he managed 
to ' reconcile' his new belief with the explicit and unmistakable 
declarations of what he continued to regard as Holy Writ, or how 
anybody has ever done it, I do not know. The boy appears to have 
shed his orthodoxy easily. His was not a nature to travail with a 
new idea for months and years, and arrive at certainty only after a 
struggle that rends the soul, and leaves it sore and sick for life. He 
was young ; the iron of our theological system had not entered into 
his soul; he took the matter somewhat lightly ; and, having arrived 
at a theory of the Divine government, which accorded with his own 
gentle and forgiving nature, he let the rest of the theological science 
alone, and went on his way rejoicing. 

Yet it was no slight thing that had happened to him. A man's 
Faith is the man. Not to have a Faith is not to be a man. Beyond 
all comparison, the most important fact of a man's life is the forma- 
tion of the Faith which he adheres to and lives by. And though 
Horace Greeley has occupied himself little with things spiritual, 
confining himself, by a necessity of his nature, chiefly to the pro- 
motion of material interests, yet I doubt not that this early change 
in his religious belief was the event which gave to all his subse- 
quent life its direction and character. Whether that change was a 
desirable one, or an undesirable, is a question upon which the reader 
of course has a decided opinion. The following, perhaps, may be 
taken as the leading consequences of a deliberate and intelligent ex- 
change of a severe creed in which a person has been educated, foi 
a less severe one to which he attains by the operations of his own 
mind : 

It quickens his understanding, and multiplies his ideas to an extent 
which. It is said, no one who has never experienced it can possibly 
conceive. It induces in him a habit of original reflection upon sub- 
jects of importance. It makes him slow to believe a thing, merely 
because many believe it — merely because it has long been believed. 
It renders him open to conviction, for he cannot forget that there 
was a time when he Jield opinions which he now clearly sees to be 



42 AT WESTIIAVEN, VERMONT. 

erroneous. It dissolves the spell of Authority ; it makes him dis« 
trustful of Great Names. It lessens his terror of Public Opinion; 
for he has confronted it — discovered that it shows more teeth than 
it uses — that it harms only those who fear it — that it bows at length 
in homage to him whom it cannot frighten. It throws him upon 
his own moral resources. Formerly, Fear came to his assistance in 
moments of temptation ; hell-tire rolled up its column of lurid smoke 
before him in the dreaded distance. But now he sees it not. If he 
lias the Intelhgence to know, the Heart to love, the Will to choose, 
the Strength to do, the Right ; he does it, and his life is high, and 
})ure, and noble. If Intelligence, or Heart, or Will, or Strength is 
wanting to him, he vacillates ; he is not an integer, his life is not. 
But, in either case, his Acts are the measure of his Worth. 

Moreover, the struggle of a heretic with the practical difSculties 
oi^ life, and particularly his early struggle, is apt to be a hard one; 
for, generally^ the Rich, the Respectable, the Talented, and the 
Virtuous of a nation are ranged on the side of its Orthodoxy in an 
overwhelming majority. They feel themselves allied with it — de- 
pendent upon it. Above all, they believe in it, and think they 
would be damned if they did not. They are slow to give their 
countenance to one who dissents from their creed, even though he 
aspire only to make their shoes, or clean them, and though they 
more than suspect that the rival shoemaker round the corner keeps 
a religious newspaper on his counter solely for the effect of the 
thing upon pious consumers of shoe-leather. 

To depart from the established Faith, then, must be accounted a 
risk, a danger, a thing uncomfortable and complicating. But, from 
the nettle Danger, alone^ we pluck the flower Safety. And he who 
loves Truth first — Advantage second — will certainly find Truth at 
length, and care little at what loss of Advantage. So, let every 
man be fully persuaded in his own mind — with which safe and 
salutary text we may take leave of matters theological, and resume 
our story. 

The political events which occurred during Horace Greeley's 
residence in Westhaven were numerous and exciting ; some of 
them were of a character to attract the attention of a far less for- 
ward and thoughtful boy than he. Doubtless he read the message 
of President Monroe in 1821, in which the policy of Protection 



DISCOVERS THE HUMBUG OF " DEMOCRACY." 43 

to American Industry was recommended strongly, and advocated 
by arguments so simple that a child could understand them; so 
cogent that no man could refute them — arguments, in fact, pre- 
cisely similar to those which the Tribune has since made familiar 
to the country. In the message of 1822, the president repeated his 
recommendation, and again in that of 1824. Those were the yeara 
of the recognition of the South American Republics, of the Greek 
enthusiasm, of Lafayette's triumphal progress through the Union ; 
of the occupation of Oregon, of the suppression of Piracy in the 
Gulf of Mexico ; of the Clay, Adams and Jackson controversy. It 
was during the period we are now considering, that Henry Clay 
made his most brilliant efforts in debate, and secured a place in the 
affections of Horace Greeley, which he retained to his dying day. 
It was then, too, that the boy learned to distrust the party who 
claimed to be pre-eminently and exclusively Democratic. 

How attentively he watched the course of political events, how 
intelligently he judged them, at the age of thirteen, may be inferred 
from a passage in an article which he wrote twenty years after, the 
facts of which he stated from his early recollection of them : 

" The first political contest," he wrote in the Tribune for August 29th, 
1846, " in which we ever took a distinct interest will serve to illustrate this dis- 
tinction [between real and sham democracy]. It was the Presidential Election 
of 1824. Five candidates for President were offered, but one of them was 
withdrawn, leaving four, all of them members in regular standing of the so- 
called Republican or Democratic party. But a caucus of one-fourth of the 
members of Congress had selected one of the four (William H. Crawford) ag 
the Republican candidate, and it was attempted to make the support of this one 
a test of party orthodoxy and fealty. This was resisted, we think most justly 
and democratically, by three-fourths of the people, including a large major- 
ity of those of this State. But among the prime movers of the caucus wires 
was Martin Van Buren of this State, and here it was gravely proclaimed and 
insisted that Democracy required a blind support of Crawford in preference to 
Adams, Jackson, or Clay, all of the Democratic party, who were competitors 
for the station. A Legislature was chosen as ' Republican' before the people 
generally had begun to think of the Presidency, and, this Legislature, it was 
undoubtingly expected, would choose Crawford Electors of President. But the 
friends of the rival candidates at length began to bestir themselves and de- 
mand that the New York Electors shouM be chosen by a direct vote of the peo- 
ple, and not by a forestalled Legislature This demand was vehemently re 



44 AT WESTHAVEN, VERMONT. 

eisted by Martin Van Buren and those who followed his lead, including the 
leading • Democratic' politicians and editors ol the State, the ' Albany Argus,' 
' Noah's Enquirer, or National Advocate,' &c. &c. The feeling in favor of an 
Election by the people became so strong and general that Gov. Yates, though 
himself a Crawford man, was impelled to call a special session of the Legisla- 
ture for this express purpose. The Assembly passed a bill giving the choice 
to the people by an overwhelming majority, in defiance of the exertions of 
Van Buren, A. C. Flagg, &c. The bill went to the Senate, to which body Silas 
Wright had recently been elected from the Northern District, and elected by 
Clintonian votes on an explicit understanding that he would vote for giving 
the choice of the Electors to the people. He accordingly voted, on one or two 
abstract propositions, that the choice ought to be given to the people. But 
when it came to a direct vote, this same Silas Wright, now Governor, voted to 
deprive the people of that privilege, by postponing the whole subject to the 
next regular session of the Legislature,- when it would be too late for the peo- 
ple to choose Electors for that time. A bare majority (17) of the Senators 
thus withheld from the people the right they demanded. The cabal failed in 
their great object, after all, for several members of the Legislature, elected as 
Democrats, took ground for Mr. Clay, and by uniting with the friends of Mr. 
Adams defeated most of the Crawford Electors, and Crawford lost the Presi- 
dency. We were but thirteen when this took place, but we looked on very 
earnestly, without prejudice, and tried to look beyond the mere names by 
which the contending parties were called. Could we doubt that Democracy 
was on one side and the Democratic party on the other 1 Will ' Democrat' 
attempt to gainsay it now 1 

" Mr. Adams was chosen President — as thorough a Democrat, in the true 
sense of the word, as ever lived — a plain, unassuming, upright, and most ca- 
pable statesman. He managed the public affairs so well that nobody could 
really give a reason for opposing him, and hardly any two gave the same rea- 
son. There was no party conflict during his time respecting the Bank, Tariff', 
Internal Improvements, nor anything else of a substantial character. He 
kept the expenses of the government very moderate. He never turned a man 
out of office because of a difference of political sentiment. Yet it was deter- 
mined at the outset that he should be put down, no matter how well he might 
administer the government, and a combination of the old Jackson, Crawford, 
and Calhoun parties, with the personal adherents of De Witt Clinton, aided by 
a shamefully false and preposterous outcry that he had obtained the Presi- 
dency by a bargain with Mr. Clay, succeeded in returning an Opposition Con- 
gress in the middle of his term, and at its close to put in General Jackson over 
him by a large majority. 

"The character of this man Jackson we had studied pretty thoroughly and 
without prejudice. His fatal duel with Dickinson about a horse-race ; his pis- 
toling Colonel Benton in the streets of Nashville; his forcing his tray through 



SHAM AND REAL DEMOCRACY. 45 

the Indian country with his drove of negroes in defiance of the express order 
of the Agent Dinsmore ; his imprisonment of Judge Hall at New Orleans^ 
long after the British had left that quarter, and when martial law ought long 
Bince to have been set aside ; his irruption into Florida and capture of Spanish 
posts and officers without a shadow of authority to do so ; his threats to cut 
off the ears of Senators who censured this conduct in solemn debate — in short, 
his whole life convinced us that the man never was a Democrat, in any proper 
sense of the term, but a violent and lawless despot, after the pattern of Csesar, 
Cromwell, and Napoleon, and unfit to be trusted with power Of course, we 
went against him, but not against anything really Democratic in him or his 
party. 

*' That General Jackson in power justified all our previous expectations of him, 
need hardly be said. That he did more to destroy the Republican character 
of our government and render it a centralized despotism, than any other 
man could do, we certainly believe. But our correspondent and we would 
probably disagree with regard to the Bank and other questions which con- 
vulsed the Union during his rule, and we will only ask his attention to one 
of them, the earliest, and, in our view, the most significant. 

"The Cherokee Indians owned, and had ever occupied, an extensive tract of 
country lying within the geographical limits of Georgia, Alabama, &g. It wag 
theirs by the best possible title — theirs by our solemn and reiterated Treaty 
stipulations. We had repeatedly bought from them slices of their lands, 
solemnly guarantying to them all that we did not buy, and agreeing to de- 
fend them therein against all aggressors. We had promised to keep all intrud- 
ers out of their territory. At least one of these Treaties was signed by Gen. 
Jackson himself ; others by Washington, Jefferson, &c. All the usual pre- 
texts for agression upon Indians failed in this case. The Cherokees had been 
our friends and allies for many years ; they had committed no depredations ; 
they were peaceful, industrious, in good part Christianized, had a newspaper 
printed in their own tongue, and were fast improving in the knowledge and 
application of the arts of civilized life. They compared favorably every way 
with their white neighbors. But the Georgians coveted their fertile lands, 
and determined to have them ; they set them up in a lottery and gambled 
them off among themselves, and resolved to take possession. A fraudulent 
Treaty was made between a few Cherokees of no authority or consideration 
and sundry white agents, including one ' who stole the livery of Heaven to 
serve the devil in,' but everybody scoffed at this mockery, as did ninety-nine 
hundredths of the Cherokees. 
" Now Georgia, during Mr. Adams' Administration, attempted to extend her 
jurisdiction over these poor people. Mr. Adams, finding remonstrance of no 
avail, stationed a part of the army at a proper point, prepared to drive all 
intruders out of the Cherokee country, as we had by treaty solemnly engaged 
to do. This answered the purpose. Georgia blustered, but dared not go fur- 



46 AT WESTHAVEN, t^ERMONT. 

ther. She went en masse for Jackson, of course. When he came in, she pro' 
ceededatonce to extend her jurisdiction over the Cherokees in very deed 
They remonstrated — pointed to their broken treaties, and urged the President 
to perform his sworn duty, and protect them, but in vain. Georgia seized a 
Cherokee accused of killing another Cherokee in their own country, tried him 
for and convicted him of murder. He sued out a writ of error, carried the 
case up to the U. S. Supreme Court, and there obtained a decision in his favor, 
establishing the utter illegality as well as injustice of the acts of.»Georgia in 
the premises. The validity of our treaties with the Cherokees, and the conse- 
quent duty of the President to see them enforced, any thing in any State-law 
or edict to the contrary notwithstanding, was explicitely affirmed. But Presi- 
dent Jackson decided that Georgia was right and the Supreme Court wrong, 
and refused to enforce the decision of the latter. So the Court was defied, the 
Cherokee hung, the Cherokee country given up to the cupidity of the Geor- 
gians, and its rightful owners driven across the Mississippi, virtually at the 
point of the bayonet. That case changed the nature of our Government, 
making the President Supreme Judge of the Law as well as its Chief Min- 
ister — in other words, Dictator. " Amen ! Hurrah for Jackson !" said the 
Pharisaic Democracy of Party and Spoils. We could not say it after them. 
We considered our nation perjured in the trampling down and exile of these 
Cherokees ; perjury would have lain heavy on our soul had we approved and 
promoted the deed." 

On another occasion, when Silas Wright was nominated for Gov- 
ernor of the State of New York, the Tribune broke forth : " The 
'notorious Seventeen '—what New-Yorker has not heard of tliem? 
— ^yet how small a proportion of our present voting population re- 
tain a vivid and distinct recollection of the outrage on Republican- 
ism and Popular Rights which made the 'Seventeen' sounenviably 
notorious ! The Editor of the Tribune is of that proportion, be it 
small or large. Though a boy in 1824, and living a mile across the 
Vermont line of the Sta,te, he can never forget the indignation 
awakened by that outrage, which made him for ever an adversary 
of the Albany Regency and the demagognes who here and else- 
where made use of the terms ' Democracy,' ' Democrats,' ' Demo- 
cratic party,' to hoodwink and cajole the credulous and unthinking 
— to divert their attention from things to names — to divest them of 
independent and manly thought, and lead them blindfold wherever 
the intriguers' interests shall dictate — to establish a real Aristocracy 
under the abused name of Democracy. It Avas 1824 which taught 
many beside us the nature of this swindle, and fired them with un- 



IMPATIENT TO BEGIN HIS APPRENTICESHIP. 47 

conquerable zeal and resolution to defeat the fraud by exposing it 
to the apprehension of a duped and betrayed people." 

These extracts will assist the reader to recall the political excite- 
ments of the time. And he may well esteem it extraordinary for a 
boy of thirteen — an age when a boy is, generally, most a boy — to 
understand them so well, and to be interested in them so deeply. 
It should be remembered, however, tliat in remote country places, 
where the topics of conversation are few, all the people take a de- 
gree of interest in politics, and talk about political questions with a 
frequency and pertinacity of which the busy inhabitants of cities 
can form little idea. 

Horace's last year in TVesthaven (1825) wore slowly away. He 
had exhausted the schools ; he was impatient to be at the types, 
and he wearied his father with importunities to get him a place in 
a printing-office. But his father was loth to let him go, for two 
reasons : the boy was useful at home, and the cautious father feareoi 
he would not do well away from home ; he was so gentle, so ab 
sent, so awkward, so little calculated to -make his way with strar 
gers. One day, the boy saw in the " Northern Spectator," a weekW 
paper, published at East Poultney, eleven miles distant, an adver- 
tisement for an apprentice in the office of the " Spectator " itself. 
He showed it to his father, and wrung from him a reluctant con- 
sent to his applying for the place. " I have n't got time to go an^ 
see about it, Horace ; but if you have a mind to walk over to Poult- 
ney and see what you can do, why you may." 

Horace had a mind to. 



CHAPTER IV. 

APPRENTICESHIP. 

rhe Village of East Poultney— Horace applies for the Place— Scene in the Garden- 
He maizes an Impression — A difficulty arises and is overcome — He enters the 
office — Rile of Initiation — Horace the Victor — His employer's recollections of hiir 
—The Pack of Cards— Horace begins to paragraph— Joins the Debating Society— 
His manner of Debating— Horace and the Dandy — His noble conduct to hia 
father — His first glimpse of Saratoga — His manners at the Table — Becomes the 
Town-Encyclopedia — The Doctor's Story — Recollections of one of his fellow ap- 
prentices—Horace's favorite Poets— Politics of the time— The Anti-Mason Excite- 
ment—The Northern Spectator stops — The Apprentice is Free. 

East Poultney is not, decidedly not, a place wliicli a traveler — 
if, by any extraordinary chance, a traveler should ever visit it — 
would naturally suspect of a newspaper. But, in one of the most 
densely-populated parts of the city of New York, there is a field! 
— a veritable, indubitable field, with a cow in it, a rough wooden 
fence around it, and a small, low, wooden house in the middle of it, 
where an old gentleman lives, who lived therie when all was rural 
around him, and who means to live there all his days, pasturing his 
cow and raising his potatoes on ground which he could sell — but 
won't — at a considerable number of dollars per foot. The field in 
the metropolis we can account lor. But that a newspaper should 
ever have been published at East Poultney, Rutland county, Ver- 
mont, seems, at the first view of it, inexplicable. 

Vermont, however, is a land of villages ; and the business which 
is elsewhere done only in large towns is, in that State, divided 
among the villages in the country. Thus, the stranger is astonished 
at seeing among the few signboards of mere hamlets, one or two 
containing most unexpected and metropolitan announcements, such 
as, " SiLVERsmTH," "Organ Factory,^' "Piano Fortes," "Print- 
ing Office," or " Patent Melodkons." East Poultney, for example, 
is little more than a hamlet, yet it once had a newspaper, and 
boasts a small factory of melodeons at this moment. A foreigner 
48 



THE VILLAGE OF EAST POULTNET. 49 

would as soon expect to see there an Italian opera honse or a 
French cafe. 

The Poultney river is a small stream that flows through a valley, 
which widens and narrows, narrows and widens, all along its course; 
here, a rocky gorge ; a grassy plain, beyond. At one of its narrow 
places, where the two ranges of hills approach and nod to one 
another, and where the river pours through a rocky channel — a 
torrent on a very small scale — the little village nestles, a cluster of 
houses at the base of an enormous hill. It is built round a small 
triangular green, in the middle of which is a church, with a hand- 
some clock in its steeple, all complete except the works, and bear- 
ing on its ample face the date, 1805. No village, however minute, 
can get on without three churches, representing the Conservative, 
the Enthusiastic, and Eccentric tendencies of human nature; and, 
of course, East Poultney has three. It has likewise the most 
remarkably shabby and dilapidated school-house in all the country 
round. There is a store or two ; but business is not brisk, and 
when a customer arrives in town, perhaps, his first difficulty will be 
to Jind the storekeeper, who has locked up his store and gone to 
hoe in his garden or talk to the blacksmith. A tavern, a furnace, a 
saw-mill, and forty dwelling houses, nearly complete the inventory 
of the village. The place has a neglected and ' seedy ' aspect which 
is rare in New England. In that remote and sequestered spot, it 
seems to have been forgotten, and left behind in the march of prog- 
ress ; and the people, giving up the hope and the endeavor to catch 
up, have settled down to the tranquil enjoyment of Things as they 
Are. The village cemetery, near by, — more populous far than the 
village, for the village is an old one — is upon the side of a steep 
ascent, and whole ranks of gravestones bow, submissive to the 
law of gravitation, and no man sets them upright. A quiet, slow 
little place is East Poultney. Thirty years ago, the people were a 
little more wide awake, and there were a few more of them. 

It was a fine spring morning in the year 1826, about ten o'clock, 
when Mr. Amos Bliss, the manager, and one of the proprietors, of 
the Northern Spectator, ' might have been seen ' in the garden be- 
hind his house planting potatoes. He heard the gate open behind 
him, and, without turning or looking round, became dimly conscious 
of the presence of a boy. But the boys of country villages go into 
4 



50 APPRENTICESHIP. ' 

whosesoever garden their wandering f^mcy impels them, and suppos- 
ing this boy to be one of his own neighbors, Mr. Bliss continued 
his work and quickly forgot that he was not alone. Tn a few min- 
utes, he heard a voice close behind him, a strange voice, higli- 
pitched and whining. 

It said, " Are you the man that carries on the printing office ?" 

Mr. Bliss then turned, and resting upon his hoe, surveyed the per- 
son who had thus addressed him. He saw standing before him a 
boy apparently about fifteen years of age, of a light, tall, and slen- 
der form, dressed in the plain, farmer's cloth of the time, his gar- 
ments cut with an utter disregard of elegance and fit. His trow- 
sers were exceedingly short and voluminous ; he wore no stockings; 
his shoes were of the kind denominated 'high-lows,' and much 
worn down; his hat was of felt, 'one of the old stamp, with so 
small a brim, that it looked more like a two-quart measure inverted 
than anything else ;' and it was worn far back on his head ; his hair 
was white, with a tinge of orange at its extremities, and it lay 
thinly upon a broad forehead and over a liead 'rocking on shoulders 
which seemed too slender to support the weight of a member so 
disproportioned to the general outline.' The general eflfect of the 
figure and its costume was so outre^ they presented such a combina- 
tion of the rustic and ludicrous, and the apparition had come upon 
him 80 suddenly, that the amiable gardener could scarcely keep 
from laughing. 

He restrained himself, however, and replied, "Yes, I'm the 
man." 

Whereupon the stranger asked, " Don't you want a boy to learn 
the trade?" 

" Well," said Mr. Bliss, " we have been thinking of it. Do you 
want to learn to print?" 

" I 've had some notion of it," said the boy in true Yankee fash- 
ion, as though he had not been dreaming about it, and longing for 
it for years. 

Mr. Bliss was both astonished and puzzled— astonished that such 
a fellow as the boy looked to be, should have ever thought of learn- 
ing to print, and puzzled how to convey to him an idea of the ab- 
surdity of the notion. So, with an expresssion in his countenance, 
puch as that of a tender-hearted dry-goods merchant might be sup- 



HORACE APPLIES FOR THE PLACE. 5;^ 

posed to assume if a hod-carrier should applj' for a place in the lace 
department, he said, " Well, my boy — but, you know, it takes con- 
siderable learning to be a printer. Have you been to school much ?" 

" No," said the boy, '' I have 'nt had much chance at school. I 've 
read some." 

" What have you read ?" asked Mr. Bliss. 

" Well, I 've read some history, and some travels, and a little of 
most everything." 

"Where do you hve?" 

" At Westhaven." 

" How did you come over ?" 

" I came on foot." 

" What's your name ?" 

" Horace Greeley." 

Now it happened that Mr. Amos Bliss had been for the last three 
years an Inspector of Common Schools, and in fulfilling the duties 
of his office — examining and hcensing teachers — he had acquired an 
uncommon facility in asking questions, and a fondness for that ex- 
ercise which men generally entertain for any employment in which 
they suppose themselves to excel. The youth before him was — in the 
language of medical students — a 'fresh subject,' and the Inspector 
proceeded to try all his skill upon him, advancing from easy ques- 
tions to hard ones, up to those knotty problems with which he had 
been wont to ' stump' candidates for the office of teacher. The 
boy was a match for him. He answered every question promptly, 
clearly and modestly. He could not be ' stumped' in the ordinary 
school studies, and of the books he had read he could give a correct 
and complete analysis. In Mr. Bliss's own account of the inter- 
view, he says, " On entering into conversation, and a partial exam- 
ination of the qualifications of my new applicant, it required but little 
time to discover that he possessed a mind of no common order, and 
an acquired intelligence far beyond his years. He had had but little 
opportunity at the common school, but he said ' he had read some,' 
and what he had read he well unde; stood and remembered. In 
addition to the ripe intelligence manifested in one so young, and 
whose instruction had been so limited, there was a single-minded- 
ness, a truthfulness and common sense in what he said, that at 
onoe commanded my regard." 



52 APPRENTICESHIP. 

After half an liour's conversation with the hoy, Mr. Bliss intimat- 
ed that he thought he would do, and told him to go into the print- 
ing-office and talk to the foreman. Horace went to the printing- 
office, and there his appearance produced an effect on the tender 
minds of the three apprentices who were at work therein, whicb 
can he much better imagined than described, and which is most 
vividly remembered by the two who survive. To the foreman 
Horace addressed himself, regardless certainly, oblivious probably, 
of the stare and the remarks of the boys. The foreman, at first, 
was inclined to wonder that Mr. Bliss should, for one moment, 
think it possible that a boy got up in that style could perform the 
most ordinary duties of a printer's apprentice. Ten minutes' talk 
with him, however, effected a partial revolution in his mind in the 
boy's favor, and as he was greatly in want of another apprentice, 
he was not inclined to be over particular. He tore off a slip of 
proof-paper, wrote a few words upon it hastily with a pencil, and 
told the boy to take it to Mr. Bliss. That piece of paper was his 
fate. The words were : ' Guess we ''d better try him.'' Away went 
Horace to the garden, and presented his paper. Mr. Bliss, whose 
curiosity had been excited to a high pitch by the extraordinary 
contrast between the appearance of the boy and his real quality, 
now entered into a long conversation with him, questioned him 
respecting his history, his past employments, his parents, their cir- 
cumstances, his own intentions and wishes; and the longer he talk- 
ed, the more his admiration grew. The result was, that he agreed 
to accept Horace, as an apprentice, provided his father would agree 
to the usual terms ; and then, with eager steps, and a light heart, 
the happy boy took the dusty road that led to his home in West- 
haven. 

"You're not going to hire that tow-head, Mr. Bliss, are you?" 
asked one of the apprentices at the close of the day. " I am," was 
the reply, " and if you boys are expecting to get any fun out of 
him, you 'd better get it quick, or you '11 be too late. There 's some- 
thing in that tow-head, as you '11 find out before you 're a week 
older." 

A day or two after, Horace packed up his wardrobe in a small 
cotton handkerchief. Small as it was, it would have held more ; 
for its proprietor never had more than two shirts, and one change 



A DIFFICLLTT ARISES AND IS OVERCOME. 53 

of outer-clothing, at the same time, till he Avas of age. Father and 
son walked, side by side, to Poultney, the boy carrying his possess- 
ions upon a stick over his shoulder. 

At Poultney, an unexpected difficulty arose, which for a time made 
Horace tremble in his high-low shoes. The terms proposed by Mr, 
Bliss were, that the boy should be bound for five years, and receive 
his board and twenty v^llars a year. Now, Mr. Greeley had ideas 
of his own on the subject of apprenticeship, and he objected to this 
proposal, and to every particular of it. In the first place, he had 
determined that no child of his should ever be bound at all. In the 
second place, he thought five years an unreasonable time ; thirdly, 
he considered that twenty dollars a year and board was a compen- 
sation ridiculously disproportionate to the services which Horace 
would be required to render ; and finally, on each and all of these 
points, he clung to his opinion with the tenacity of a Greeley. Mr. 
Bliss appealed to the established custom of the country ; five years 
was the usual period ; the compensation offered was the regular 
thing ; the binding was a point essential to the employer's interest. 
And at every pause in the conversation, the appealing voice of Hor- 
ace was heard : " Father, I guess you 'd better make a bargain with 
Mr. Bliss;" or, "Father, I guess it won't make much difference;" 
or, "Don't you think you'd better do it, father?" At one mo- 
ment the boy was reduced to despair. Mr. Bliss had given it as 
his ultimatum that the proposed binding was absolutely indispensa- 
ble ; he " could do business in no other way." " Well, then, Hor- 
ace," said the father, " let us go home." The father turned to go ; 
but Horace lingered ; he could not give it up ; and so the father 
turned again ; the negotiation was re-opened, and after a prolonged 
discussion, a compromise was effected. What the terms were, that 
were finally agreed to, I cannot positively state, for the three me- 
mories which I have consulted upon the subject give three different 
replies. Probably, however, they were — no binding, and no money 
for six months ; then the boy could, if he chose, bind himself for 
the remainder of the five years, at forty dollars a year, the appren- 
tice to be boarded from the beginning. And so the father went 
home, and the son went straight to the printing office and took his 
first lesson in the art of setting type. 

A few months after, it may be as well to mention here, Mr. 



54 APPRENTICESlflP. 

Greeley removed to Erie county, Pennsylvania, and bought some 
wild land there, from vrhich he gradually created a farm, leaving 
Horace alone in Vermont. Grass now grows where the little house 
stood in Westhaven, in which the family lived longest, and the barn 
in which they stored their hay and kept their cattle, leans forward 
like a kneeling elephant, and lets in the daylight through ten 
thousand apertures. But the neighbors point out the tree that 
stood before their front door, and the tree that shaded the kitchen 
window, and the tree that stood behind the house, and the tree 
whose apples Horace liked, and the bed of mint with which he re- 
galed his nose. And both the people of Westhaven and those of 
Amherst assert that whenever the Editor of the Tribune revisits 
the scenes of his early life, at the season when apples are ripe, one 
of the things that he is surest to do, is to visit the apple trees that 
produce the fruit which he liked best when he was a boy, and 
which he still prefers before all the apples of the world. 

The new apprentice took his place at the font, and received from 
the foreman his ' copy,' composing stick, and a few words of in- 
struction, and then he addressed himself to his task. He needed 
no further assistance. The mysteries of the craft he seemed to 
comprehend intuitively. He had thought of his chosen vocation 
for many years ; he had formed a notion how the types must be ar- 
ranged in order to produce the desired impression, and, therefore, 
all he had to acquire was manual dexterity. In perfect silence, 
without looking to the right hand or to the left, heedless of the 
sayings and doings of tlie other apprentices, though they were bent 
on mischief, and tried to attract and distract his attention, Hor- 
ace worked on, hour after hour, all that day ; and when he left the 
office at night could set type better and faster than many an ap- 
prentice who had had a month's practice. The next day, he worked 
with the same silence and intensity. The boys were puzzled. 
They thought it absolutely incumbent on them to perform an initiat- 
ing rite of some kind ; but the new boy gave them no handle, 
no excuse, no opening. He committed no greenness, he spoke to no 
one, looked at no one, seemed utterly oblivious of every thing save 
only his copy and his type. They threw type at him, but he never 
looked around. They talked saucily at him, but he threw back no 
retort. This would never do. Towards the close of the third day, 



HIS EMPLOYER S RECOLLECTIONS OF HIM. 



55 



tbe oldest apprentices took one of the large black balls with which 
printers used to dab the ink upon the type, and remarking that in 
his opinion Horace's hair was of too light a hue for so black an 
art as that wliich he had undertaken to learn, applied the ball, 
well inked, to Horace's head, making four distinct dabs. The boys, 
the journeyman, the pressman and the editor, all paused in their 
work to observe the result of this experiment. Horace neither 
spoke nor moved. He went on with his work as though nothing 
had happened, and soon after went to the tavern where he boarded, 
and spent an hour in purifying his dishonored locks. And that was 
all the ' fun ' the boys ' got out ' of their new companion on that 
occasion. They were conquered. In a few days the victor and the 
vanquished were excellent friends. 

Horace was now fortunately situated. Ampler means of acquir- 
ing knowledge were within his reach than lie had ever before en- 
joyed ; nor were there wanting opportunities for the display of his 
acquisitions and the exercise of his powers. 

" About this time," writes Mr. Bliss, *' a sound, well- read theologian and a 
practical printer was employed to edit and conduct the paper. This opened a 
desirable school for intellectual culture to our young debutant. Debates en- 
sued ; historical, political, and religious questions were discussed ; and often 
while all hands were engaged at the font of types ; and here the purpose for 
which our young aspirant ' had read some ' was made manifest. Such was 
the correctness of his memory in what he had read, in both biblical and pro- 
fane history, that the reverend gentleman was often put at fault by his correc- 
tions. He always quoted chapter and verse to prove the point in dispute. On 
one occasion the editor said that money was the root of all evil, when he was 
corrected by the ' devil,' who said he believed it read in the Bible that the love 
of money was the root of all evil. 

" A small town library gave him access to books, by which, together with 
the reading of the exchange papers of the office, he improved all his leisure 
hours. He became a frequent talker in our village lyceum, and often wrote 
dissertations. 

"In the first organization of our village temperance society, the question 
arose as to the age when the young might become members. Fearing lest his 
own age might bar him, he moved that they be received when they were old 
enough to drink — which was adopted nem. con. 

" Though modest and retiring, he was often led into political discussions 
Vfith our ablest politicians, and lew would leave the field without feeling in- 



56 APPRENTICESHIP. 

Btructed by the soundness of bis views and the unerring correctness of hia 
statements of political events. 

" Having a thirst for knowledge, he bent his mind and all his energies to its 
acquisition, with unceasing application and untiring devotion ; and I doubt if, 
in the whole term of his apprenticeship, he ever spent an hour in the common 
recreations of young men. He used to pass my door aa he went to his daily 
meals, and though I often sat near, or stood in the way, so much absorbed did 
he appear in his own thoughts — his head bent forward and his eyes fixed 
upon the ground, that I have the charity to believe the reason why he never 
turned his head or gave me a look, was because he had no idea I was 
there !" 

On one point the reminiscences of Mr. Bliss require correction. 
He thinks that his apprentice never spent an hour in the common 
recreations of young men during his residence in Poultney. Mr. 
Bhss, however, was his senior and his employer ; aud therefore 
observed him at a distance and from above. But I, who have con- 
versed with those who were the friends and acquaintances of the 
youth, can tell a better story. He had a remarkable fondness for 
games of mingled skill and chance, such as whist, draughts, chess, 
and others ; and the office was never without its dingy pack of 
cards, carefully concealed from the reverend editor and the serious 
customers, but brought out from its hiding-place whenever the 
coast was clear and the boys had a leisure hour. Horace never 
gambled, nor would he touch the cards on Sunday ; but the delight 
of playing a game occasionally Avas heightened, perhaps, by the fact 
that in East Poultney a pack of cards was regarded as a thing ac- 
cursed, not fit for saintly hands to touch. Bee-hunting, too, con- 
tinued to be a favorite amusement with Horace. " He was always 
ready for a bee-hunt," says one who knew him well in Poultney, 
and bee-hunted with him often in the woods above the village. To 
finish with this matter of amusement, I may mention that a danc- 
ing-school was held occasionally at the village-tavern, and Horace 
was earnestly (ironically, perhaps) urged to join it ; but he refused. 
Not that he disapproved of the dance — that best of all home recrea- 
tions — but he fancied he was not exactly the figure for a quadrille. 
He occasionally looked in at the door of the dancing-room, but 
aever could be prevailed upon to enter it. 

Until he came to live at Poultney, Horace had never tried his hand 



JOINS A DEBATING SOCIETY. 57 

fit original composition. ^"1:3 injurious practice of writing ' compo- 
sitions' was not among the exercises of any of tlie schools which he 
liad attended. At Poultney, very early in his apprenticeship, he 
began, not indeed to write, but to compose paragraphs for the pa- 
per as he stood at the desk, and to set them in type as he composed 
them. They were generally items of news condensed from large 
articles in the exchange papers ; but occasionally he composed an 
original paragraph of some length ; and he continued to render edi- 
torial assistance of this kind all the while he remained in the office. 
The ' Northern Spectator' was an ' Adams paper,' and Horace was 
an Adams man. 

The Debating Society, to which Mr. Bliss alludes, was an impor- 
tant feature in the life of East Poultney. There happened to be 
among the residents of the place, during the apprenticeship of Hor- 
ace Greeley, a considerable number of intelligent men, men of some 
knowledge and talent— the editor of the paper, the village doctor, 
a county judge, a clergyman or two, two or three persons of some 
political eminence, a few well-informed mechanics, farmers, and 
others. These gentlemen had formed themselves into a 'Lyceum,' 
before the arrival of Horace, and the Lyceum had become so 
famous in the neighborhood, that people frequently came a distance 
of ten miles to attend its meetings. It assembled weekly, in the 
winter, at the little brick school-house. An original essay was read 
by the member whose ' turn ' it was to do so, and then the question 
of the evening was debated ; first, by four members who had been 
designated at the previous meeting, and after they had each spoken 
once, the question was open to the whole society. The questions 
were mostly of a very innocent and rudimental character, as, 'Is 
novel-reading injurious to society?' 'Has a person a right to take 
life in self-defense?' 'Is marriage conducive to happiness?' 'Do 
we, as a nation, exert a good moral influence in the world?' 'Do 
either of the great parties of the day carry out the principles of the 
Declaration of Independence V ' Is the Union likely to be perpetu- 
ated ?' ' "Was Napoleon Bonaparte a great man V ' Is it a person's 
duty to take the temperance pledge ?' et cetera. 

Horace joined the society, the first winter of his residence in 
Poultney, and, young as he was, soon became one of its leading 
members. " He was a i ^al giant at the Debating Society," says 



58 APPRENTICESHtP. 

one of his early admirers. " Whenever he was appointed to speak 
or to read an essay, he never wanted to be excused ; he was always 
ready. He was exceedingly intere&ted in the questions wliich he 
discussed, and stuck to his opinion against all opposition — not dis- 
courteously, but still he stuch to it^ replying with the most perfect 
assurance to men of high station and of low. H« had one advan- 
tage over all his fellow members; it was his memory. He had read 
everything, and remembered the minutest details of important 
events ; dates, names, places, tigures, statistics — nothing had escaped 
him. He was never treated as a hoy in the society, but as a man 
and an equal ; and his opinions were considered with as much de- 
ference as those of the judge or the sheriff — more, I think. To the 
graces of oratory he made no pretense, but he was a fluent and 
interesting speaker, and had a way of giving an unexpected turn to 
the debate by reminding members of a fact, well known but over- 
looked; or by correcting a misquotation, or by appealing to what 
are called first principles. He was an opponent to be afraid of; 
yet his sincerity and his earnestness were so evident, that those 
whom he most signally floored liked him none the less for it. He 
never lost his temper. In short, he spoke in his sixteenth year just 
as he speaks now ; and when he came a year ago to lecture in a 
neighboring village, I saw before me the Horace Greeley of the 
old Poultney 'Forum,' as we called it, and no other." 

It is hardly necessary to record, that Horace never made the 
slightest preparation for the meetings of the Debating Society in 
the way of dress — except so far as to put on his jacket. In the 
summer, he was accustomed to wear, while at work, two garments, 
a shirt and trowsers; and when the reader considers that his trow- 
sers were very short, his sleeves tucked up above his elbows, his 
shirt open in front, he will have before his mind's eye the picture 
of a youth attired with extreme simplicity. In his walks about the 
village, he added to his dress a straw hat, valued originally at one 
shilling. In the winter, his clothing was really insufficient. So, at 
least, thouglit a kind-hearted lady who used to see him pass her 
window on his way to dinner. "He never," she says, "had an 
overcoat while he lived here; and I used to pity him so much in 
cold weather. I remember him as a slender, pale little fellow, 
younger looking than he really was, in a brown jacket much too 



HIS FIRST GLIMPSE AT SARATOGA. 59 

short for hiin. I used to tliink the winds would blow him awaj 
pometiraes, as he crept along the fence lost in thought, with his 
head down, and Ids hands in his pockets. He was often laughed 
at for his honiel}' dress, by the boys. Once, when a very interest- 
ing question was to be debated at the school-house, a young man 
who was noted among us for the elegance of his dress and the 
length of his account at the store, advised Horace to get a new ^ rig 
out' for the occasion, particularly as he was to lead one of the 
sides, and an unusually large audience wsls expected to be present. 
' No,' said Horace, ' I guess I 'd better wear my old clothes than 
run in debt for new ones,' " 

Now, forty dollars a year is suflBcient to provide a boy in the 
country with good and substantial clothing ; half the sum will keep 
him warm and decent. The reader, therefore, may be inclined to 
censure the young debater for his apparent parsimony; or worse, for 
an insolent disregard of the feelings of others; or, icorst^ for a pride 
that aped humility. The reader, if that be the present inclination 
of his mind, will perhaps experience a revulsion of feeling when he 
is informed — as I now do inform him, and on the best authority- 
that every dollar of the apprentice's little stipend which he could 
save by the most rigid economy, was piously sent to his father, who 
was struggling in the wilderness on the other side of the Alleghanies, 
with the difficulties of a new farm, and an insufficient capital. 
And this was the practice of Horace Greeley during all the years 
of his apprenticeship, and for years afterwards ; as -long, in fact, as 
his fiither's land was unpaid for and inadequately provided with 
implements, buildings, and stock. At a time when filial piety may 
be reckoned among the extinct virtues, it is a pleasure to record a 
fact like this. 

Twice, during his residence at Poultney, Horace visited his 
parents in Pennsylvania, six hundred miles distant, walking a great 
part of the way, and accomplishing the rest on a slo\v canal boat. 
On one of these tedious journeys he first saw Saratoga, a circum- 
stance to which he alluded seven years after, in a fanciful epistle, 
written from that famous watering-place, and published in' the 
"New Yorker": 

*•' Saratoga ! bright cif y of 'ihe present ! thou ever-during one-and-twenty 



60 APPRENTICESHIP- 

of existence ! a wanderer by thy stately palaces and gushing fountains salutes 
thee ! Years, yet not many, have elapsed since, a weary reamer from a dis- 
tant land, he first sought thy health-giving waters. November's sky was 
over earth and him, and more than all, over thee ; and its chilling blasts 
made mournful melody amid the waving branches of thy ever verdant pines. 
Then, as now, thou wert a City of Tombs, deserted by the gay throng whose 
light laughter re-echoes so joyously through thy summer-robed arbors. But 
to him, thou wert ever a fairy land, and he wished to quaff of thy Hygeian 
treasures as of the nectar of the poet's fables. One long and earnest draught, 
ere its sickening disrelish came over him, and he flung down the cup in the 
bitterness of disappointment and disgust, and sadly addressed him again to 
his pedestrian journey. Is it ever thus with thy castles. Imagination ? thy 
pictures, Fancy 1 thy dreams, Hope ? Perish the unbidden thought ! A 
health, in sparkling Congress, to the rainbow of life ! even though its prom- 
ise prove as shadowy as the baseless fabric of a vision. Better even the 
dear delusion of Hope — if delusion it must be — than the rugged reality of 
listless despair. (I think I could do this better in rhyme, if I had not tres- 
passed in that line already. However, the cabin-conversation of a canal- 
packet is not remarkably favorable to poetry.) In plain prose, there is a 
great deal of mismanagement about this same village of Saratoga The sea- 
eon gives up the ghost too easily," &c., &o. 

During the four years that Horace lived at East Poultney, he 
boarded for some time at the tavern, which still affords entertain- 
ment for man and beast — i. e. peddler and horse — in that village. 
It was kept by an estimable couple, who became exceedinglj'^ at- 
tached to their singular guest, and he to them. Their recollections 
of him are to the following effect :— Horace at that time ate and 
drank whatever was placed befoi-e him ; he was rather fond of good 
living, ate furiously, and fast, and much. He was very fond of coffee, 
but cared little for tea. Every one drank in those days, and there 
was a great deal of drinking at the tavern, but Horace never could 
be tempted to taste a drop of anything intoxicating. " I always," 
said the kind landlady, " took a great interest in young people, and 
when I saw they were going wrong, it used to distress me, no matter 
whom they belonged to ; but I never feared for Horace. Whatever 
might be going on about the village or in the bar-room, I always 
knew he would do right." He stood on no ceremony at the table ; 
he fell to without waiting to be asked or helped, devoured every 
thing right and left, stopped as suddenly as ho had begun, and 



THE doctor's story. 61 

ranished instantly. One day, a8 Horace was stretching his long 
arm over to the other side of the table in quest of a distant dish, 
the servant, wishing to hint to him in a jocular manner, that that 
was not exactly the most proper way of proceeding, said, " Don't 
trouble yourself, Horace, / want to help you to that dish, for, you 
know, I have 2i particular regard for you." He blushed, as only a 
boy with a very white face can blush, and, thenceforth, was less 
adventurous in exploring the remoter portions of the table-cloth. 
When any topic of interest was started at the table, he joined in it 
with the utmost confidence, and maintained his opinion against 
anybody, talking with great vivacity, and never angrily. He came, 
at length, to be regarded as a sort of Town Encyclopedia, and if 
any one wanted to know anything, he went, as a matter of course, 
to Horace Greeley; and, if a dispute arose between two individuals, 
respecting a point of history, or politics, or science, they referred it 
to Horace Greeley, and whomsoever he declared to be right, was 
confessed to be the victor in the controversy. Horace never went 
to a tea-drinking or a party of any kind, never went on an excur- 
sion, never slept away from home or was absent from one meal 
during the period of his residence at the tavern, except when 
he went to visit his parents. He seldom went to church, but spent 
the Sunday, usually, in reading. He was a stanch Universalist, b 
stanch whig, and a pre-eminently stanch anti-Mason. Thus, the 
landlord and landlady. 

Much of this is curiously confirmed by a story often told in con- 
vivial moments by a distinguished physician of New York, who 
on one occasion chanced to witness at the Poultney tavern the ex- 
ploits, gastronomic and encyclopedic to which allusion has just 
been made. " Did I ever tell you," he is wont to begin, '' how and 
where I first saw my friend Horace Greeley ? Well, thus it hap- 
pened. Tt was one of the proudest and happiest days of my life. 
I was a country boy then, a farmer's son, and we lived a few miles 
from East Poultney. On the day in question I was sent by my 
father to sell a load of potatoes at the store in East Poultney, and 
bring back various commodities la exchange. Now this was the 
first time, you must know, that I had ever been entrusted with so 
important an errand. I had been to the village with my father 
often enough, but now I was to go alone, and I felt as proud and 



62 APPRENTICESHIP. 

independent as a midshipman the first time he goes ashore m con- 
mand of a boat. Big with the fate jof twenty bushels of potatoes, 
off I drove — reached the village — sold oui my load — drove round 
to the tavern — put up ray horses, and went in to dinner. This going 
to the tavern on my own account, all by myself, and paying my own 
bill, was, I thought, the crowning glory of the whole adventure. 
There were a good many people at dinner, the sheriff of the county 
and an ex-member of Congress among them, and I felt, considerably 
abashed at first ; but I had scarcely begun to eat, when my eyes 
fell upon an object so singular that I could do little else than stare 
at it all the while it remained in the room. It was a tall, pale, 
white-haired, gawky boy, seated at the further end of the table. 
He was in his shirt-sleeves, and he was eating with a rapidity and 
awkwardness that I never saw equaled before nor since. It seem- 
ed as if he was eating for a wager, and had gone in to win. He 
neither looked up nor round, nor appeared to pay the least attention 
to the conversation. My first thought was, ' This is a pretty sort 
of a tavern to let such a fellow as that sit at the same table with all 
these gentlemen ; he ought to come in with the hostler,' I thought 
it strange, too, that no one seemed to notice him, and I supposed 
he owed his continuance at the table to that circumstance alone. 
And so I sat, eating little myself, and occupied in watching the won- 
derful performance of this wonderful youth. At length the conver- 
sation at the table became quite animated, turning upon some 
measure of an early Congress; and a question arose how certain 
members had voted on its final passage. There was a difference 
of opinion ; and the sheriff, a very finely-dressed personage, I 
thouglit, to my boundless astonishment, referred the matter to the 
unaccountable Boy, saying, 'Aint that right, Greeley?' 'No,' 
said the Unaccountable, without looking up, ' you 're wi-ong.' 
'There,' said the ex-member, 'I told you so.' 'And you 're 
wrong, too,' said the still-devouring Mystery. Then he laid down 
his knife and fork, and gave the history of the measure, explained 
the state of parties at the time, stated the vote in dispute, named 
the leading advocates and opponents of the bill, and, in short, gave 
a complete exposition of the whole matter. I listened and won- 
dered ; but what surprised me most was, that the company receiv- 
ed his statement as pure gospel, and as settling the question be- 



kecollections of one of his fellow apprentices. 53 

yond dispute — as a dictionary settles a dispute respecting the spell- 
ing of a word. A minute after, the boy left the dining room, and I 
never saw him again, till I met him, years after, in the streets of 
New York, when I claimed acquaintance with him as a brother 
Vermonter, and told him this siory, to his great amusement." 

One of his fellow-apprentices favors me with some interesting 
reminiscences. He says, '^Iwas a fellow-apprentice with Horace 
Greeley at Poultney for nearly two years. We boarded together 
during that period at four different places, and we were constantly 
together." The following passage from a letter from this early 
friend of our hero will be welcome to the reader, notwithstanding 
its repetitions of a few facts already known to him : — 

Little did the inhabitants of East Poultney. where Horace Greeley went to 
reside in April, 1826, as an apprentice to the printing business, dream of the 
potent influence he was a few years later destined to exert, not only upon the 
politics of a neighboring State, but upon the noblest and grandest philan- 
thropic enterprises of the age. He was then a remarkably plain-looking unso- 
phisticated lad of fifteen, with a slouching, careless gait, leaning away for- 
ward as he walked, as if both his head and his heels wore too heavy for his 
body. He wore a wool hat of the old stamp, with so small a brim, that it 
looked more like a two-quart measure inverted than a hat ; and he had a sin- 
gular, whining voice that provoked the merriment of the older apprentices, who 
had hardly themselves outgrown, in their brief village residence, similar pecu- 
liarities of country breeding. But the rogues could not help pluming themselves 
upon their superior manners and position ; and it must be confessed that the 
young ' stranger ' was mercilessly ' taken in ' by his elders in the office, when- 
ever an opportunity for a practical joke presented itself. 

But these things soon passed away, and as Horace was seen to be an un- 
usually intelligent and honest lad, he came to be better appreciated. The office 
in which he was employed was that of the Northern Spectator, a weekly 
paper then published by Messrs. Bliss & Dewey, and edited by E. G. Stone, 
brother to the late Col. Stone of the N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. The new 
comer boarded in Mr. Stone's family, by whom he was well esteemed for his 
boyish integrity ; and Mr. S. on examination found him better skilled in Eng- 
lish grammar, even at that early age, than were the majority of school teach- 
ers in those times. His superior intelligence also strongly commended 
him to the notice of Amos Bli^s, Esq., one of the firm already mentioned, 
then and now a highly-respectable merchant of East Poultney, who haa 
marked with pride and pleasure every successive step of the ' Westhaveu boy,' 
from that day to this. 



64 APPRENTICaeHIP. 

In consequence of the change of proprietors, editors and other things per« 
taining to the management of the Spectator office, Horace had, during the 
term of his apprenticeship, about as many opportunities of ' boarding round,' 
as ordinarily fall to the lot of a country schoolmaster. In 1827, he boarded 
at the "Eagle tavern,' which was then kept by Mr. Harlow Hosford, and was 
the head-quarters of social and fashionable life in that pleasant old village. 
There the balls and village parties were had, there the oysters suppers came 
off, and there the lawyers, politicians and village oracles nightly congregated. 
Horace was no hand for ordinary boyish sports ; the rough and tumble games 
. of wrestling, running, etc., he had no relish for ; but he was a diligent student 
Ln his leisure hours, and eagerly read everything in the way of books and 
papers that he could lay his hands on. And it was curious to see what a power 
of mental application he had — a power which enabled him, seated in the bar- 
room, (where, perhaps, a dozen people were in earnest conversation,) to pursue 
undisturbed the reading of his favorite book, whatever it might be, with evi- 
dently as close attention and as much satisfaction as if he had been seated 
alone in his chamber. 

If there ever was a self-made man, this same Horace Greeley is one, for 
he had neither wealthy or influential friends, collegiate or academic educa- 
tion, nor anything to start him in the world, save his own native good sense, 
an unconquerable love of study, and a determination to win his way by hia 
own efforts. He had, however, a natural aptitude for arithmetical calcula- 
tions, and could easily surpass, in his boyhood, most persons of his age in th« 
facility and accuracy of his demonstrations; and his knowledge of gramroai 
has been already noted. He early learned to observe and remember politicaJ 
statistics, and the leading men and measures of the political parties, the va- 
rious and multitudinous candidates for governor and Congrnss, not only m » 
single State, but in many, and finally in all the States, together with the lo- 
cation and vote of this, that, and the other congressional districtc, (whig, dero- 
ccratic and what not,) at all manner of elections. These things he rapidly and 
easily mastered, and treasured in his capacious memory, till we venture to sa;? 
he has few if any equals at this time, in this particular department, in thi» 
or any other country. I never knew but one man who approached him in this 
particular, and that was Edwin Williams, compiler of the N. Y. State Reg- 
ister. 

Another letter from the same friend contains information stil^ 
more valuable. " Judging," he writes, " from what I do certainlj' 
know of him, I can say that few young men of my acquaintance 
grew up with so much freedom from everything of a vicious and 
corrupting nature — so strong a resolution to study everything ip 
the way of useful knowledge — and such a quick and clear percep 



POLITICS OF THE TIME. 65 

tion of the queer and humorous, whether in print or in actual life, 
flis love of the poets — Byron, Shakspeare, etc., discovered itself Id 
boyhood — and often have Greeley and I strolled off into the woods, 
of a warm day, with a volume of Byron or Campbell in our pockets, 
and reclining in some shady place, read it off to each other by the 
hour. In this way, I got such a hold of ' Childe Harold,' the ' Pleas- 
ures of Hope,' and other favorite poems, that considerable portions 
have remained ever since in my memory. Byron's apostrophe to 
the Ocean, and some things in the [4:th] canto relative to the men 
and monuments of ancient Italy, were, if I mistake not, his special 
favorites — also the famous description of the great conflict at 
Waterloo. ' Mazeppa ' was also a marked favorite. And for many 
of Mrs. Remans' poems he had a deep admiration." 

The letter concludes with an honest burst of indignation; 
"Knowing Horace Greeley as I do and have done for thirty years, 
knowing his integrity, purity, and generosity, I can tell you one 
thing, and that is, that tlie contempt with which I regard the slan- 
ders of certain papers with respect to his conduct, and character, is 
quite inexpressible. There is doubtless a proper excuse for the con- 
duct of lunatics, mad dogs, and rattlesnakes ; but I know of no decent, 
just, or reasonable apology for such meanness (it is a hard word but 
a very expressive one) as the presses alluded to have exhibited." 

Horace came to Poultney, an ardent politician ; and the events 
which occurred during his apprenticeship were not calculated to 
moderate his zeal, or weaken his attachment to the party he had 
chosen. John Quincy Adams was president, Calhoun was vice- 
president, Henry Clay was secretary of State. It was one of the 
best and ablest administrations that had ever ruled in Washington ; 
and the most unpopular one. It is among the inconveniences ot 
universal suffrage, that the party which comes before the country 
with the most taking popular Cry is the party which is likeliest to 
win. During the existence of this administration, the Opposition 
had a variety of popular Cries which were easy to vociferate, and 
well adapted to impose on the unthinking, i. e. the majority. 
'Adams had not been elected by the people.' 'Adams had gained 
the presidency by a corrupt bargain with Henry Clay.' ' Adams 
was lavish of the public money.' But of all the Cries of the time, 
Hurrah for Jackson' was tlje most effective. Jackson was a man 
5 



66 APPRENTICESHIP. 

of the people. Jackson was the hero of New Orleans •a.nd the con- 
qneror of Florida. Jackson was pledged to retrenchment and 
reform. Against vociferation of this kind, what availed the fact, 
evident, incontrovertible, that the affairs of the government were 
conducted with dignity, judgment and moderation?— that the coun- 
try enjoyed prosperity at home, and the respect of the world? — 
that the claims of American citizens against foreign governments 
were prosecuted with diligence and success? — that treaties highly 
advantageous to American interests were negotiated with leading 
nations in Europe and South America? — that the public revenue 
was greater than it had ever been before ? — that the resources of 
the country were made accessible by a liberal system of internal 
improvement? — that, nevertheless, there were surplus millions in 
the treasury? — that the administration nobly disdained to employ 
the executive patronage as a means of securing its continuance in 
power? — All this availed nothing. ' Hurrah for Jackson ' carried the 
day. The Last of the Gentlemen of the Revolutionary school re- 
tired. The era of wire-pulHng began. That deadly element was 
introduced into our political system which rendered it so exquisitely 
vicious, tiiat thenceforth it worked to corruption by an irresistible 
necessity! It is called Rotation in Office. It is embodied in the 
maxim, 'To the victors belong the spoils.' It has made the word 
office-holder synonymous with the word sneah. It has thronged the 
capital with greedy sycophants. It has made politics a game of 
cunning, with enough of chance in it to render it interesting to the 
low crew that play. It has made the president a pawn with which 
to inake the first move — a puppet to keep the people amused while 
their pockets are picked. It has excluded from the service of the 
State nearly every man of ability and worth, and enabled bloated 
and beastly demagogues, without a ray of talent, without a senti 
ment of magnanimity, illiterate, vulgar, insensible to shame, to exert 
a power in this republic, whicli its greatest statesmen in their 
greatest days never wielded. 

In the loud contentions of the period, the reader can easil}^ bt 
lieve that our argumentative apprentice took an intense interest 
The village of East Poultney cast little more — if any more — than 
half a dozen votes for Jackson, but how much this result was owing 
^o the efforts of Horace Greeley cannot now be ascertained. All 



THE ANTI-MASON EXCITEMENT. 67 

agree that he contributed his full share to the general babble which 
the election of a President provokes. During the whole adminis- 
tration of Adainss, the revision of the tariff with a view to the bet- 
ter protection of American manufactures was among the most 
prominent topics of public and private discussion. 

It was about the year 182Y that the Masonic excitement arose 
Military men tell us that the bravest regiments are subject to panic 
Eegiments that bear upon their banners the most honorable distinc- 
tions, whose colors are tattered with the bullets of a hundred 
fights, will on a sudden falter in the charge, and fly, like a pack of 
cowards, from a danger which a pack of cowards miglit face with- 
out ceasing to be tliouglit cowards. Similar to these causeless and 
irresistible panics of war are those frenzies of fear and fury mingled 
which sometimes come over the mind of a nation, and make it for 
a time incapable of reason and regardless of justice. Such seems 
to have been the nature of the anti-Masonic mania which raged in 
the Northern States from the year 1827, 

A man named Morgan, a printer, had published, for gain, a book 
in which the harmless secrets of the Order of Free Masons, of wliich 
he was a member, were divulged. Public curiosity caused the book 
to have an immense sale. Soon after its publication, Morgan an- 
nounced another volume which was to reveal unimagined horrors ; 
but, before the book appeared, Morgan disappeared, and neither 
ever came to light. Now arose the question. What became of Mor- 
gan ? and it rent the nation, for a time, into two imbittered and 
angry factions. " Morgan !" said the Free Masons, "that perjured 
traitor, died and was buried in the natural and ordinary fashion." 
"Morgan!" said the anti-Masons, "that martyred patriot, was drag- 
ged from his home by Masonic ruffians, taken in the dead of night 
to the shores of the Niagara river, murdered, and thrown into the 
rapids." It is impossible for any one to conceive the utter delirium 
into which the people in some parts of the country were thrown by 
the agitation of this subject. Books were written. Papers were 
established. Exhibitions were got up, in which the Masonic cere- 
monies were caricatured or imitated. Families were divided. Fa- 
tliers disinherited their sons, and sons forsook their fathers. Elec- 
tions were influenced, not town and county elections merely, but 
State and national elections. There were Masonic candidates and 



68 APPRENTICESHIP. 

anti-Masonic candidates in every election in the Northern States 
for at least two years after Morgan vanished. Hundreds of Lodges 
bowed to the storm, sent in their charters to the central authority, 
and voluntarily ceased to exist. There are families now, about tlie 
country, in which Masonry is a forbidden topic, because its intro- 
duction would revive the old quarrel, and turn the peaceful tea-table 
into a scene of hot and interminable contention. There are still old 
ladies, male and female, about the country, who will tell you with 
grim gravity that, if you trace up Masonry, through all its Orders, 
till you come to the grand, tip-top. Head Mason of the world, you 
will discover that that dread individual and the Chief of the Society 
of Jesuits are one and the same Person ! 

I have been tempted to use the word ridiculous in connection 
with this aflfair; and looking back upon it, at the distance of a 
quarter of a century, ridiculous seems a proper word to apply to it. 
But it did not seem ridiculous then. It had, at least, a serious side. 
It was believed among the anti-Masons that the Masons were bound 
to protect one another in doing injustice ; even the commission of 
treason and murder did not, it was said, exclude a man from the 
shelter of his Lodge. It was alleged that a Masonic jury dared not, 
or would not, condemn a prisoner who, after the fullest proof of his 
guilt had been obtained, made the Masonic sign of distress. It was 
asserted that a judge regarded the oath which made him a Free 
Mason as more sacred and more binding than that which admitted 
him to the bench. It is in vain, said the anti-Masons, for one of its 
to seek justice against a Mason, for a jury cannot be obtained with- 
out its share of Masonic members, and a court cannot be found 
without its Masonic judge. 

Our apprentice embraced the anti-Masonic side of this contro- 
versy, and embraced it warmly. It was natural that he should. 
It was inevitable that he should. And for the next two or three 
years he expended more breath in denouncing the Order of the 
Free-Masons, than upon any other subject — perhaps than all other 
subjects put together. To this day secret societies are his special 
aversion. 

But we must hasten on. Horace had soon learned his trade. He 
became the best hand in the oflfice, and rendered important assist- 
ance in editing the paper. Some numbers were almost entirely his 



INVENTORY OF HIS POSSESSIONS. 69 

work. But there was ill-luck about the little establishment. Several 
times, as we have seen, it changed proprietors, but none of thera 
could make it prosper; and, at length, in the month of June, 1830, 
i;he second month of the apprentice's fifth year, the Northern 
Spectator was discontinued ; the printing-office was broken up, and 
the apprentice, released from his engagement, became his own mas- 
ter, free to wander whithersoever he could pay his passage, and to 
work for whomsoever would employ him. 

His possessions at this crisis were— a knowledge of the art of 
printing, an extensive and very miscellaneous library in his mem- 
ory, a wardrobe that could be stuffed into a pocket, twenty dollars 
in cash, and — a sore leg. The article last named played too serious 
a part in the history of its proprietor, not to be mentioned in the 
inventory of his property. He had injured his leg a year before in 
stepping from a box, and it troubled him, more or less, for three 
years, swelling occasionally to four times its natural size, and oblig- 
ing him to stand at his work, with the leg propped up in a most 
horizontal and uncomfortable position. It was a tantalizing feature 
of the case that he could walk without much difficulty, but stand- 
ing was torture. As a printer, he had no particular occasion to 
walk ; and by standing he was to gain his subsistence. 

Horace Greeley was no longer a Boy. His figure and the ex- 
pression of his countenance were still singularly youthful ; but he 
was at the beginning of his twentieth year, and he was henceforth 
to confront the world as a man. So far, his life had been, upon the 
whole, peaceful, happy and fortunate, and he had advanced towards 
his object without interruption, and with sufficient rapidity. His 
constitution, originally weak, Labor and Temperance had rendered 
capable of great endurance. His mind, originally apt and active, 
incessant reading had stored with much that is most valuable 
among the discoveries, the thoughts, and the fancies of past genera- 
tions. In the conflicts of the Debating Society, the printing-office, 
and the tavern, he had exercised his powers, and tried the correct- 
ness of his opinions. If his knowledge was incomplete, if there 
were wide domains of knowledge, of which he had little more than 
heard, yet what he did know he knew well ; he had learned it, not 
as a task, but because be wanted to hnow it; it partook of the 
vitality of his own mind ; it was his own, and he could use it. 



70 



APPRENTICESHIP. 



If there had been a People's College, to \Yhich the new eman- 
cipated apprentice could have gone, and where, earning his subsist- 
ence by the exercise of his trade, he could have spent half of each 
day for the next two years of his life in the systematic study of 
Language, History and Science, under the guidance of men able to 
guide him aright, under the influence of women capable of attracting 
his regard, and worthy of it — it had been well. But there was not 
then, and there is not now, an institution that meets the want and 
the need of such as he. 

At any moment there are ten thousand young men and women 
in this country, strong, intelligent, and poor, who are about to go 
forth into the world ignorant, who would gladly go forth instruct- 
ed, if they could get knowledge, and earn it as they get it, by the 
labor of their hands. They are the sons and daughters of our farm- 
ers and mechanics. They are the very elite among the young 
people of the nation. There is talent, of all kinds and all degrees, 
among them — talent, that is the nation's richest possession — talent, 
that could bless and glorify the nation. Should there not be — can 
there not be, somewhere in this broad land, a University-Town — 
where all trades could be carried on, all arts practiced, all knowl- 
edge accessible, to which those who have a desire to become ex- 
cellent in their calling, and those who have an aptitude for art, and 
those who have fallen in love with knowledge, could accomplish 
the wish of their hearts without losing their independence, without 
becoming paupers, or prisoners, or debtors ? Surely such a University 
for the People is not an impossibility. To found such an institu- 
tion, or assemblage of institutions — to find out the conditions upon 
which it could exist and prosper — were not an easy task. A Com- 
mittee could not do it, nor a 'Board,' nor a Legislature. It is 
an enterprise for One Man— a man of boundless disinterestedness, 
of immense administrative and constructive talent, ""ertile in ex- 
pedients, courageous, persevering, physically strong, and morally 
great — a man born for his work, and devoted to it ' with a quiet, 
deep enthusiasm'. Give suoh a man the indispensable land, and 
twenty-five years, and the People's College would be a dream no 
more, but a triumphant and imitable reality; and the founder 
thereof would have done a deed compared with which, either 



71 

for its difficulty or for its results, such triumphs as those of Traf- 
algar and Waterloo would not be worthy of mention. 

There have been self-sustaining monasteries ! Will there never 
be self-sustaining colleges? Is tliere anything like an inherent 
impossibility in a thousand men and women, in the fresh strength 
of youth, capable of a just subordination, working together, each 
for all and all for each, with the assistance of steam, machinery, 
and a thousand fertile acres — earning a subsistence by a few hours' 
labor per day, and securing, at least, half their time for the acqui- 
sition of the art, or the language, or the science which they prefer? 
I think not. We are at present a nation of ignoramuses, our ig- 
norance rendered only the more conspicuous and misleading, by the 
faint intimations of knowledge which we acquire at our schools. 
Are we to remain such for ever ? 

But if Horace Greeley derived no help from schools and teachers, 
he received no harm from them. He finished his apprenticeship, 
an uncontaniinated young man, with the means of independence 
at his finger-ends, ashamed of no honest employment, of no decent 
habitation, of no cleanly garb. ''There are unhappy times," says 
Mr. Oarlyle, " in the world's history, when he that is least educated 
will chiefly have to say that he is least perverted ; and, with the 
multitude of false eye-glasses, convex, concave, green, or even 
yellow, has not lost the natural use of his eyesP " How were it," 
he asks, '' if we surmised, that for a man gifted with natural vigor, 
with a man's character to be developed in him, more especially if 
in the way of literature, as thinker and writer, it is actually, in 
these strange days, no special misfortune to be trained up among 
the uneducated classes, and not among the educated ; but rather, 
of the two misfortunes, the smaller?" And again, he observes, 
" The grand result of schooling is a mind with just vision to discern, 
with free force to do ; the grand schoolmaster is peaotioe." 



CHAPTER V. 

HE WANDERS. 

'toiaco tt.>x« J>oiii:uey— His firat Overcoat— Home to his Father's Log House—Ranges 
.he cou..hj for work— The Sore Leg Cured— Gets Employment, but little Money— 
AuiJOiiis^eu :iie Draught-Players— Goes to Erie, Pa.— Interview with an Editor— 
Btico.jes a Jomnejman in the Office — Description of Erie— The Lake — His Generos- 
ity to his Father- His New Clothes — No more work at Erie -Starts for New 
York. 

"Well, Horace, and where are you going now?" asked the kind 
t-»ndlady of the tavern, as Horace, a few days after the closing of 
the printing-office, appeared on the piazza, equipped for the road — 
i. <5., with his jacket on, and with his bundle and his stick in his 
hand. 

"- 1 am going," was the prompt and sprightly answer, " to Penn- 
sylvania, to see my father, and there I shall stay till my leg gets 
well." 

With these words, Horace laid down the bundle and the stick, 
and took a seat for the last time on that piazza, the scene of many 
a peaceful triumph, where, as Political Gazetteer, he had often giyen 
the information that he alone, of all the town, could give ; whero, 
as political partisan, he had often brought an antagonist to extrem- 
ities; where, as oddity, he had often fixed the gaze and twisted the 
neck of the passing peddler. 

And was there no demonstration of feeling at the departure of 
so distinguished a personage ? There was. But it did not take 
the form of a silver dinner-service, nor of a gold tea ditto, nor of a 
piece of plate, nor even of a gold pen, nor yet of a series of reso- 
lutions. While Horace sat on the piazza, talking with his old 
friends, who gathered around him, a meeting of two individuals 
was held in the corner of the bar-room. They were the landlord 
and one of his boarders ; and the subject of their deliberations 
were, an old brown overcoat belonging to the latter. The land- 
lord had the floor^ and his speed was to the following purport : — 
72 




[young GREELEY'S ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK.] 



HORACE LEAVES PODLTNET. 73 

" He felt like doing something for Horace before he went. Horace 
was an entirely unspeakable person. He had lived a long time in 
the house ; he had never given any trouble, and we feel for him 
IS for our own son. Now, there is that brown over-coat of yours. 
It 's cold on the canal, all the summer, in the mornings and even- 
ings. Horace is poor and his father is poor. You are owing me 
a little, as much as the old coat is worth, and what I say is, let us 
give the poor fellow the overcoat, and call our account squared." 
This feeling oration was received with every demonstration of ap 
proval, and the proposition was carried into effect forthwith. The 
landlady gave him a pocket Bible. In a few minutes more, Horace 
rose, put his stick through his little red bundle, and both over his 
shoulder, took the overcoat upon his other arm, said ' Good-by,' 
to his friends, promised to write as soon as he was settled again, 
and set off upon his long journey. His good friends of the tavern 
followed him with their eyes, until a turn of the road hid the bent 
and shambling figure from their sight, and then they turned away 
to praise him and to wish him well. Twenty -five years have 
passed ; and, to this hour, they do not tell the tale of his departure 
witliout a certain swelling of the heart, without a certain g^stening 
of the softer pair of eyes. 

It was a fine, cool, breezy morning in the month of June, 1830. 
Nature had assumed those robes of brilliant green which she wears 
only in June, and welcomed the wanderer forth with that heavenly 
smile which plays upon her changeful countenance only wlien she 
is attired in her best. Deceptive smile ! The forests upon those 
hills of hilly Rutland, brimming with foliage, concealed their granite 
ribs, their chasms, their steeps, their precipices, their morasses, and 
the reptiles that lay coiled among them ; but they were there. So 
did the ahuring aspect of the world hide from the wayfarer the 
struggle, the toil, the danger that await the man who goes out from 
his seclusion to confront the world alone — the world of which he 
knows nothing except by hearsay, that cares nothing for him, and 
takes no note of his arrival. The present wayfarer was destined to 
be quite alone in his conflict with the world, and he was destined to 
wrestle with it for many years before it yielded him anything more 
than a show of submission. How prodigal of help is the Devil to 
his scheming and guileful servants ! But the Powers Celestial— 



74 HE WANDEItS. 

they love their chosen too wisely and too well to diminish by cne 
care the burthen that makes them strong, to lessen by one pang the 
agony that makes them good, to prevent one mistake of the folly 
that makes them wise. 

Light of heart and step, the traveler walked on. In the after- 
noon he reached Comstock's Fording, fourteen miles from Poultney ; 
thence, partly on canal-boat and partly on foot, he went to Schenec- 
tady, and there took a ' line-boat' on the Erie Canal. A week of 
tedium in the slow line-boat — a walk of a hundred miles through the 
woods, and he had reached his father's log-house. He arrived late in 
the evening. The last ten miles of the journey he performed after 
dark, guided, when he could catch a glimpse of it through the 
dense foliage, by a star. The journey required at that time about 
twelve days : it is now done in eighteen hours. It cost Horace 
Greeley about seven dollars ; the present cost by railroad is eleven 
dollars ; distance, six hundred miles. 

He found his father and brother transformed into backwoodsmen. 
Their little log-cabin stood in the midst of a narrow clearing, which 
was covered with blackened stumps, and smoked with burning tim- 
ber. Forests, dense and almost unbroken, heavily timbered, abound- 
ing in wolves and every other description of ' varmint,' extended a 
day's journey in every direction, and in some directions many days' 
journey. The country was then so wild and ' new,' that a hunter would 
sell a man a deer before it was shot; and appointing the hour when, 
and the spot where, the buyer was to call for his game, would have 
it ready for him as punctually as though he had ordered it at Fulton 
market. The wolves were so bold, that their bowlings could be 
beard at the house as they roamed about in packs in search of the 
sheep ; and the solitary camper-out could hear them 'breathe and see 
their eye-balls glare, as they prowled about his smoldering fire. 
Mr. Greeley, who had brought from Vermont a fondness for rearing 
sheep, tried to continue that branch of rural occupation in the wil- 
derness ; but after the wolves, in spite of his utmost care and pre* 
caution, had killed a hundred sheep for him, he gave up the at- 
tempt. But it was a level and a very fertile region — ' varmint' al 
ways select a good ' location' — and it has since been subdued into a 
beautiful land of grass and woods. 

Horace staid at home foi several weeks, assisting; his father. 



GETS EMPLOYMENT. 75 

fisliing occasionally, and otherwise amusing him^;elf : while liis good 
mother assiduously nursed the sore leg. It healed too slowly for its 
impatient proprietor, who had learned ' to labor,' not ' to wait ;' 
and so, one morning, he walked over to Jamestown, a town twenty 
miles distant, where a newspaper was struggling to get published, 
and applied for work. Work he obtained. It was very freely 
given ; but at the end of the week the workman received a promise 
to pay, but no payment. He waited and worked four days longer, 
and discovering by that time that there was really no money to be 
had or hoped for in Jamestown, he walked home again, as poor as 
before. 

And now the damaged leg began to swell again prodigiously ; at 
one time it was as large below the knee as a demijohn. Cut off from 
other employment, Horace devoted all his attention to the unfortu- 
nate member, but without result. He heard about this time of a 
famous doctor who lived in that town of Pennsylvania which 
exults in the singular name of ' North-East,' distant twenty-five 
miles from his father's clearing. To him, as a last resort, though 
the family could ill afford the trifling expense, Horace went, and 
staid with him a month. "You don't drink liquor," were the 
doctor's first words as he examined the sore, " if you did, you 'd 
have a bad leg of it." The patient thought he had a bad leg of it, 
without drinking liquor. The doctor's treatment was skillful, and 
finally successful. Among other remedies, he subjected the limb to 
the action of electricity, and from that day the cure began. The 
patient left North-East greatly relieved, and though the leg waa 
weak and troublesome for many more months, yet it gradually re- 
covered, the wound subsiding at length into a long red scar. 

He wandered, next, in an easterly direction, in search of employ- 
ment, and found it in the village of Lodi, fifty miles off, in Cata- 
raugus county, New York. At Lodi, he seems to have cherished 
a hope of being able to remain awhile and earn a little money. 
He wrote to his friends in Poultney describing the paper on which 
he worked, " as'a Jackson paper, a forlorn affair, else I would have 
sent you a few numbers." One of his letters written from Lodi to 
a friend in Vermont, contains a passage which may serve to show 
what was going on in the mind of the printer as he stood at the 
case setting up Jacksonian paragraphs. *' You are aware tliat an 



76 HE WANDERS. 

important election is close at hand in this State, and of course, a 
great deal of interest is felt in the result. The regular Jacksonians 
imagine that they will be able to elect Throop by 20,000 majority; 
but after having obtained all the information I can, I give it as my 
decided opinion, that if none of the candidates decline, we shall 
elect Francis Granger, governor. This county will give him 1000 
majority, and I estimate his vote in the State at 125,000. I need 
not inform you that such a result will be highly satisfactory to your 
humble servant, H. Greeley." It was a result, however, which he 
had not the satisfaction of contemplating. The confident and yet 
cautious manner of the passage quoted is amusing in a politician 
but twenty years of age. 

At Lodi, as at Jamestown, our roving journeyman found work 
much more abundant than money. Moreover, he was in the camp 
of the enemy ; and so at the end of his sixth week, he again took 
bundle and stick and marched homeward, with very little more 
money in his pocket than if he had spent his time in itlleness. On his 
(vay home he fell in with an old Poultney friend who had recently 
jettled in the wilderness, and Horace arrived in time to assist at 
;he ' warming' of the new cabin, a duty which he performed in a 
w ay that covered him with glory. 

In the course of the evening, a draught-board was introduced, 
and the stranger beat in swift succession half a dozen of the best 
players in the neighborhood. It happened that the place was rather 
noted for its skillful draught-players, and the game was played in- 
cessantly at private houses and at public. To be beaten in so scan- 
dalous a manner by a passing stranger, and he by no means an 
ornamental addition to an evening party, and young enough to be 
the son of some of the vanquished, nettled them not a little. They 
challenged the victor to another encounter at the tavern on the next 
evening. The challenge was accepted. The evening arrived, and 
there was a considerable gathering to witness and take part in the 
struggle — among the rest, a certain Joe Wilson who had been spe- 
cially sent for, and whom no one had ener beaten, since he came 
into the settlement. The great Joe was held in reserve. The party 
of the previous evening, Horace took in turn, and beat with ease. 
Other players tried to foil his ' Yankee tricks,' but were themselvea 
foiled. The reserve was brought up. Joe Wilson took his seat at 



GOES TO ERIE, PA. 77 

the table. He played his deadliest, pausing long before he hazarded 
A move; the company hanging over the board, hushed and anxious. 
They were not kept many minutes in suspense ; Joe was overthrown ; 
the unornamental stranger was the conqueror. Another game — 
the same result. Another and another and another ; but Joe lost 
every game. Joseph, however, was too good a player not to re- 
spect so potent an antagonist, and he and all the party behaved well 
under their discomfiture. The board was laid aside, and a lively 
conversation ensued, which was continued ' with unabated spirit to 
a late hour.' The next morning, the traveler went on his way, leav- 
ing behind him a most distinguished reputation as a draught-player 
and a politician. 

He remained at home a few days, and then set out again on his 
travels in search of some one who could pay him wages for his 
work. He took a ' bee line ' through the woods for the town of 
Erie, thirty miles off, on the shores of the great lake. He had ex- 
hausted the smaller towns; Erie was the last possible move in that 
corner of the board ; and upon Erie he fixed his hopes. There were 
two printing oflaces, at that time, in the place. It was a town of 
five thousand inhabitants, and of extensive lake and inland trade. 

The gentleman still lives who saw the weary pedestrian enter 
Erie, attired in the homespun, abbreviated and stockingless style 
with which the reader is already acquainted. His old black felt hat 
slouched down over his shoulders in the old fashion. The red cot- 
ton handkerchief still contained his wardrobe, and it was carried 
on the same old stick. The country frequenters of Erie were then, 
and are still, particularly rustic in appearance ; but our hero seemed 
the very embodiment and incarnation of the rustic Principle ; and 
among the crowd of Pennsylvania farmers that thronged the streets, 
he swung along, pre-eminent and peculiar, a marked person, the 
observed of all observers. He, as was his wont, observed nobody, 
but went at once to the oflBce of the Erie Gazette, a weekly paper, 
published then and still by Joseph M. Sterrett. 

'*I was not," Judge Sterrett is accustomed to relate, "I was not 
in the printing oflSce when he arrived. I came in, soon after, and 
saw him sitting at the table reading the newspapers, and so absorbed 
in them that he paid no attention to my entrance. My first feeling 
wad Die of astonishment, that a fellow so singularly ' green ' in hi? 



78 HE "WANDERS. 

appearance should be reading^ and above all, reading so intently 
I looked at him for a few moments, and then, finding that he made 
no movement towards acquainting me with his business, I took up 
my composing stick and went to work. He continued to read for 
twenty minutes, or more ; when he got up, and coming close to my 
case, asked, in his peculiar, whining voice, 

"Do you want any help in the printing business?" 

" Why," said I, running my eye involuntarily up and down the 
extraordinary figure, " did you ever work at the trade ?" 

" Yes," was the reply ; " I worked some at it in an oflfice in Ver- 
mont, and I should be willing to work under instruction, if you 
could give me a job." 

Now Mr. Sterrett did want help in the printing business, and 
could have given him a job ; but, unluckily, he misinterpreted this 
modest reply. He at once concluded that the timid applicant was 
a runaway apprentice; and runaway apprentices are a class of their 
fellow-creatures to whom employers cherish a common and decided 
aversion. Without communicating his suspicions, he merely said 
that he had no occasion for further assistance, and Horace, without 
a word, left the apartment. 

A similar reception and the same result awaited him at the other 
oflice ; and so the poor wanderer trudged home again, not in the 
best spirits. 

"Two or three weeks after this interview," continues Judge 
Sterrett— he is a judge, I saw him on the bench — "an acquaint- 
ance of mine, a farmer, called at the office, and inquired if I want- 
ed a journeyman, I did. He said a neighbor of his had a son 
who learned the printing business somewhere Down East, and 
wanted a place. ' What sort of a looking fellow is he V said I. 
He described him, and I knew at once that he was my supposed 
runaway apprentice. My friend, the farmer, gave him a high char 
acter, however ; so I said, ' Send him along,' and a day or two 
after along he came." 

The terms on which Horace Greeley entered the office of the 
Erie Gazette were of his own naming, and therefore peculiar. He 
would do the best lie could, he said, and Mr. Sterrett might pay 
him what he (Mr. Sterrett) thought he had earned. He had only 
one request to make, and that was, that he should uot be required 



THE TOWN OF ERIE. 79 

tc work at the press, unless tlie office was so much huiried that his 
services 11 that department could not be dispensed with. He had 
had a little difficulty with his leg, and press work rather hurt him 
tlian otherwise. The bargain included the condition that he was to 
board at Mr. Sterrett's house ; and when he went to dinner on the 
day of his arrival, a lady of the family expressed her opinion of 
him in the following terms : — " So, Mr. Sterrett, you 've hired that 
fellow to work for you, have you? Well, you won't keep him three 
days." In three days she had changed her opinion ; and to this 
hour the good lady cannot bring herself to speak otherwise than 
kindly of him, though she is a stanch daughter of turbulent Erie, 
and ' must say, that certain articles which appeared in the Tribune 
during the War, did really seem too bad from one who had been 
himself an Eriean.' But then, 'he gave no more trouble in the 
house than if he had n't been in it.' 

Erie, famous in the Last War but one, as the port whence Com- 
modore Perry sailed out to victory — Erie, famous in the last war 
of all, as the place where the men, except a traitorous thirteen, and 
the women, except their faithful wives, all rose as One Man against 
the Railway Trains, saying, in the tone which is generally described 
as ' not to be misunderstood ' : " Thus far shalt thou go without 
stopping for refreshment, and no farther," and achieved as Break 
of Gauge men, the distinction accorded in another land to the 
Break o' Day boys— Erie, which boasts of nine thousand inhabit- 
ants, and aspires to become the Buffalo of Pennsylvania — Erie, 
which already has business enough to sustain many stores wherein 
not every article known to traffic is sold, and where a man cannot 
consequently buy coat, hat, boots, physic, plough, crackers, grind- 
stone and penknife, over the same counter — Erie, which has a 
Mayor and Aldermen, a dog-law, and an ordinance against shooting 
off guns in the street under a penalty of five dollars for each and 
every offense — ^Erie, for the truth cannot be longer dashed from 
utterance, is the shabbiest and most broken-down looking large 
town, /, tlie present writer, an individual not wholly untraveled, 
ever saw, in a free State of this Confederacy. 

The shores of the lake there are ' bluffy,' sixty feet or more above 
the water, and the land for many miles back is nearly a dead level, 
exceedingly fertile, and quite uninteresting. No, not qui to For 



80 



HE WANDERS. 



much of the primeval forest remains, and the gigantic trees that 
were sailings when Columbus played iu the streets of Genoa, 
tower akft, a hundred feet without a branch, with that exquisite 
daintiness of taper of which the eye never tires, which architecture 
has never equaled, which only Grecian architecture approached, 
and was beautiful because it approached it. The City of Erie is 
merely a square mile of this level land, close to the edge of the 
bluff, with a thousand houses built upon it, which are arranged on 
the plan of a corn-field — only, not more than a third of the houses 
have 'come up.' The town, however, condenses to a focus around 
a piece of ground called ' The Park,' four acres in extent, surrounded 
with a low, broken board fence, that was white-washed a long 
time ago, and therefore now looks very forlorn and pig-pen-ny. 
The side-walks around ' The Park ' present an animated scene. The 
huge hotel of the place is there — a cross between the Astor House 
and a country tavern, having the magnitude ^f the former, the 
quahty of the latter. There, too, is the old Court-House, — ^its 
uneven brick floor covered with the chips of a mortising machine, 
— its galleries up near the high ceiling, kept there by slender 
poles, — its vast cracked, rusty stove, sprawling all askew, and 
putting forth a system of stovepipes that wander long through 
space before they find the chimney. Justice is administered in 
that Court-house in a truly free and easy style ; and to hear the 
drowsy clerk, with his heels in the air, administer, 'twixt sleep 
and awake, the tremendous oath of Pennsylvania, to a brown, 
abashed farmer, with his right hand raised in a manner to set 
oflT his awkwardness to the best advantage, is worth a journey 
to Erie. Two sides of ' The Park ' are occupied by the principal 
stores, before which the country wagons stand, presenting a con- 
tinuous range of muddy wheels. The marble structure around 
the corner is not a Greek temple, though built in the style of 
one, and quite deserted enough to be a ruin — it is the Erie Cus- 
tom House, a fine example of governmental management, as it 
is as much too large for the business done in it as the Custom 
House of New York is too small. 

The Erie of the present ye'^r is, of course, not the Erie of 1831, 
when Horace Greeley walkt^'^ its streets, with his eyes on the pave- 
ment and a bundle of exc)*^ ges in his pocket, ruminating on tlie 



THE LAKE. 81 

prospects of the next election, or thinking out a copy of verses to 
send to his mother. It was a smaller place, then, with fewei brick 
blocks, more pigs in the street, and no custom-house in the Greek 
style. But it had one feature which has not changed. The Lake 
was there ! 

An island, seven miles long, but not two miles wide, once a part 
of the main land, lies opposite the town, at an apparent distance of 
half a mile, though in reality two miles and a half from the shore. 
This island, which approaches the main land at either extremity, 
forms the harbor of Erie, and gives to that part of the lake the ef- 
fect of a river. Beyond, the Great Lake stretches away further 
than the eye can reach. 

A great lake in fine weather is like the ocean only in one particu- 
lar — you cannot see across it. The ocean asserts itself; it is demon- 
strative. It heaves, it flashes, it sparkles, it foams, it roars. On the 
stillest day, it does not quite go to sleep ; the tide steals up the white 
beach, and glides back again over the shells and pebbles musically, or 
it murmurs along the sides of black rocks, with a subdued though al- 
ways audible voice. The ocean is a living and life-giving thing, ' fair, 
and fresh, and ever free.' The lake, on a fine day, lies dead. No 
tide breaks upon its earthy shore. It is as blue as a blue ribbon, as 
blue as the sky ; and vessels come sailing out of heaven, and go sail- 
ing into heaven, and no eye can discern where the lake ends and 
heaven begins. It is as smooth as a mirror's face, and as dull as a 
mirror's back. Often a light mist gathers over it, and then the lake 
is gone from the prospect ; but for an occasional sail dimly descried, 
or a streak of black smoke left by a passing steamer, it would give 
absolutely no sign of its presence, though the spectator is standing 
a quarter of a mile from the shore. Oftener the mist gathers thick- 
ly along the horizon, and then, so perfect is the illusion, the stran- 
ger will swear he sees the opposite shore, not fifteen miles off. 
There is no excitement in looking upon a lake, and it has no effect 
upon the appetite or the complexion. Yet there is a quiet, languid 
beauty hovering over it, a beauty all its own, a charm that grows 
upon the mind the longer you linger upon the shore. The Castle 
of Indolence should have been placed upon the bank of Lake Erie 
where its inmates could have lain on the grass and gazed down, 



82 HE WANDERS. 

through all the slow hours of the long summer day, upon the lazy, 
hazy, blue expanse. 

When the wind blows, the lake wakes up ; and still it is not the 
ocean. The waves are discolored by the eartky bank upon which 
they break with un-oceanlike monotony. They neither advance 
nor recede, nor roar, nor swell. A great lake, with all its charms, 
and they are many and great, is only an infinite pond. 

The people of Erie care as much for the lake as the people of 
Niagara care for the cataract, as much as people generally care for 
anything wonderful or anything beautiful which they can see by 
turning their heads. In other words, they care for it as the means 
by which lime, coal, and lumber may be transported to another and 
a better market. jS'ot one house is built along the shore, though the 
shore is high and level. Not a path has been worn by human feet 
above or below the bluff. Pigs, sheep, cows, and sweet-brier bushes 
occupy the unenclosed ground, which seems so made to be built 
upon that it is surprising the handsome houses of the town should 
have been built anywhere else. One could almost say, in a weak 
moment. Give me a cottage on the bluff, and I will live at Erie 1 

It was at Erie, probably, that Horace Greeley first saw the uni- 
form of the American navy. The United States and Great Britain 
are each permitted by treaty to keep one vessel of war in commis- 
sion on the Great Lakes. The American vessel usually lies in the 
harbor of Erie, and a few officers may be seen about the town. 
"What the busy journeyman printer thought of those idle gentlemen, 
apparently the only quite useless, and certainly the best dressed, 
persons in the place, may be guessed. Perhaps, however, he passed 
them by, in his absent way, and saw them not. 

In a few days, the new comer was in high favor at the oflBce of 
the Erie Gazette. He is remembered there as a remarkably correct 
and rehable compositor, though not a rapid one, and his steady 
devotion to his work enabled him to accomplish more than faster 
workmen. He was soon placed by his employer on the footing of 
a regular journeyman, at the usual wages, twelve dollars a month 
and board. All the intervals of labor he spent in reading. Aa 
soon as the hour of cessation arrived, he would hurry off his apron, 
wash his hands, and lose himself in his book or his newspapers, 
often forgetting his dinner, and often forgetting whether he had had 



NO MORE WORK AT ERIE. 



83 



Lif dinuer or not. More and more, he became absorbed in politics. 
It is said, by one who worked beside him at Erie, that he could tell 
the name, post-office address, and something of the history and 
political leanings, of every member of Congress ; and that he could 
give the particulars of every important election that had occurred 
within his recollection, even, in some instances, to the county 
majorities. 

And thus, in earnest work and earnest reading, seven profitable 
and i^t unhappy months passed swiftly away. He never lost one 
day's work. On Sundays, he read, or walked along the shores of 
the lake, or sailed over to the Island. His better fortune made no 
change either in his habits or his appearance; and his employer 
was surprised, that month after month passed, and yet his strange 
journeyman drew no money. Once, Mr. Sterrett ventured to 
rally him a little upon his persistence in wearing the hereditary 
homespun, saying, " Now, Horace, you have a good deal of money 
coming to you ; don't go about the town any longer in that out- 
landish rig. Let me give you an order on the store. Dress up a 
little, Horace." To which Horace replied, looking down at the ' out- 
landish rig,' as though he had never seen it before, " You see, Mr. 
Sterrett, my father is on a new place, and I want to help him all I 
can." However, a short time after, Horace did make a faint effort 
to dress up a little ; but the few articles which he bought were so 
extremely coarse and common, that it was a question in the office 
whether his appearance was improved by the change, or the 
contrary. 

At the end of the seventh month, the man whose sickness had 
made a temporary vacancy in the office of the Gazette, returned to 
his place, and there was, in consequence, no more work for Horace 
Greeley. Upon the settlement of his account, it appeared that he 
had drawn for his personal expenses during his residence at Erie, 
the sum of six dollars ! Of the remainder of his wages, he took 
about fifteen dollars in money, and the rest in the form of a note ; 
and with all this wealth in his pocket, he walked once more to his 
father's house. This note the generous fellow gave to his father, 
reserving the money to carry on his own personal warfare with the 
world. 

And now, Horace was tired of dallying with fortune in conn- 



g4 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. 

try printing offices. He said, he thought it was time to do some- 
thing, and he formed the bold resolution of going straight to New 
York and seeking his fortune in the metropolis. After a few days of 
recreation at home, he tied up his bundle once more, put his money 
in his pocket, and plunged into the woods in the direction of the 
Erie Odnal. 



CHAPTER VI. 

AKRIVAL IN NEW YORK. 

The journey — a night on the tow-path — He reaches the city — Inventory of hispropertj 
— Looks for a boarding-house — Finds one — Expends half his capital upon clothes 
— Searches for employment — Berated by bavid Hale as a runaway apprentice- 
Continues the search — Goes to church — Hears of a vacancy — Obtains work — Th# 

boss takes him for a ' fool,' but change" his opinion — Nicknamed ' the Ghost 

— Practical jokes — Horace metamorphosed — Dispute about commas — The shoe 
maker's boardiug-house — Grand banquet on Sundays, 

He took the canal-boat at Bulfalo and came as far as Lockport, 
whence he walked a few miles to Gaines, and staid a day at the 
house of a friend whom he had known in Vermont. Next morn- 
ing he walked back, accompanied by his friend, to the canal, and 
both of them waited many hours for an eastward-bound boat to 
pass. Night came, but no boat, and the adventurer persuaded iiis 
friend to go home, and set out himself to walk on the tow-path to- 
wards Albion, It was a very dark night. He walked slowly on, 
hour after hour, looking anxiously behind him for the expected 
boat, looking more anxiously before him to discern the two fiery 
eyes of the boats bound to the west, in time to avoid being swept 
into the canal by the tow-line. Towards morning, a boat of the 
slower sort, a scow probably, overtook him ; he went on board, and 
tired with his long walk, lay down in the cabin to rest. Sleep was 
tardy in alighting upon his eye-lids, and he had the pleasure of 
hearing his merits and his costume fully and freely discussed 
by his fellow passengers. It was Monday morning. One passen- 
ger explained the coming on board of the stranger at so unusual aD 



INVENTORY OF HIS PROPERTY. 85 

'iour, by suggesting that he had been courting all night. (Sunday 
evening in country places is sacred to love.) His appearance was so 
exceedingly unlike that of a lover, that this sally created much 
amusement, in which the wakeful traveler shared. At Rochester 
he took a faster boat. Wednesday night he reached Schenectady, 
where he left the canal and walked to Albany, as the canal between 
those two towns is much obstructed by locks. He reached Albany 
on Thursday morning, just in time to see the seven o'clock steam- 
boat move out into the stream. He, therefore, took passage in 2 
tow-boat which started at ten o'clock on the same morning. At 
sunrise on Friday, the eighteenth of August, 1831, Horace Greeley 
landed at Whitehall, close to the Battery, in the city of New York. 

New York was, and is, a city of adventurers. Few of our emi- 
nent citizens were born here. It is a common boast among New 
Yorkers, that this great merchant and that great millionaire came 
to the city a ragged boy, with only three and sixpence in his 
pocket; and now look at him ! In a list of the one hundred men 
who are esteemed to be the most ' successful ' among the citizens 
of New York, it is probable that seventy-five of the names would 
be those of men who began their career here in circumstances that 
gave no promise of futijj-e eminence. But among them all, it is 
questionable whether there was one who on his arrival had so lit- 
tle to help, so much to hinder him, as Horace Greeley. 

Of solid cash, his stock was ten dollars. His other property con- 
sisted of the clothes he wore, the clothes he carried in his small 
bundle, and the stick with which he carried it. The clothes he 
wore need not be described ; they were those which had already 
astonished the people of Erie. The clothes he carried were very 
few, and precisely similar in cut and quality to the garments which 
he exhibited to the public. On the violent supposition that his 
wardrobe could in any case have become a salable commodity, we 
may compute that he was worth, on this Friday morning at sun- 
rise, ten dollars and seventy-five cents. He had no friend, no ac- 
quaintance here. There was not a human being upon whom he 
had any claim for help or advice. His appearance was all against 
hini. He looked in his round jacket hke an overgrown boy. No 
one was likely to observe the engaging beauty of his face, or the 
noble round of his brow under that overhanging hat, over that 



<-'^ ARRIVAL INf NEW YORK. 

long and stooping body. He was somewhat timorous in his inter 
course with strangers. He would not intrude upon their attention ; 
he had not the faculty of pushing his way, and proclaiming his mer- 
its and his desires. To the arts by which men are conciliated, by 
which unwilling ears are forced to attend to an unwelcome tale, he 
was utterly a stranger. Moreover, he had neglected to bring witfi 
him an}' letters of recommendation, or any certificate of his skill 
as a primer. It had not occurred to him that anything of the kind 
was necessary, so unacquainted was he with the life of cities. 

His first employment was to find a boarding-house where he 
could live a long time on a small sum. Leaving the green Battery 
on his left hand, Jie strolled oflP into Broad-street, and at the corner 
of that street and Wall discovered a house that in his eyes had the 
aspect of a cheap tavern. He entered the bar-room, and asked the 
price of board. 

" I guess we 're too high for you," said the bar-keeper, after 
bestowing one glance upon the inquirer. 

" Well, how much a week do you charge ?" 

" Six dollars." 

" Yes, that 's more than I can afibrd," said Horace with a laugh 
at the enormous mistake he had made in inquiring at a house of 
such pretensions. 

He turned up Wall-street, and sauntered into Broadway. Seeing 
no house of entertainment that seemed at all suited, to his circum- 
stances, he sought the water once more, and wandered along the 
wharves of the North River as far as Washington-market. Board- 
ing-houses of the cheapest kind, and drinking-houses of the lowest 
grade, the former frequented chiefly by emigrants, the latter by 
sailors, were numerous enough in that neighborhood. A house, 
which combined the low groggery and the cheap boarding-house 
in one small establishment, kept by an Irishman named M'Gorlick, 
chanced to be the one that first attracted the rover's attention. It 
looked so mean and squalid, that he was tempted to enter, and 
again inquire for what sum a man could buy a week's shelter and 
Bustenance. 

" Twenty shillings," was the landlord's reply. 

" Ah," said Horace, "that sounds more like it." 

Ho engaged to board with Mr. M'Gorlick on the instant, and 



SSARCHES FOR EMPLOYMENT. 87 

proceeded soon to test the quality of his fare by taking breakfast 
in the bosoin of his family. The cheapness of the entertainment 
was its best recommendation. 

After breakfast Horace porformed an act which I believe he had 
never spontaneously performed before. He bought some clothes, 
with a view to render himself more presentable. They were of 
the commonest kind, and the garments were few, but the purchase 
absorbed nearly half his capital. Satisfied with his appearance, he 
now began the round of the printing-offices, going into every one 
he could find, and asking for employment — merely asking, and 
going away, without a word, as soon as he was refused. In the 
course of the morning, lie found himself in the office of the Journal 
of Commerce, and he chanced to direct his inquir}^ ' if they wanted 
a hand,' to the late David Hale, one of the proprietors of the paper. 
Mr. Hale took a survey of the person who had presumed to ad- 
dress him, and replied in substance as follows : — 

" My opinion is, young man, that you 're a runaway apprentice, 
and you 'd better go home to your master." 

Horace endeavored to explain his position and circumstances, 
but the impetuous Hale could be brought to no more gracious 
response than, " Be oflT about your business, and don't bother us." 

Horace, more amused than indignant, retired, and pursued his 
way to the next office. All that day he walked the streets, climb- 
ed into upper stories, came down again, ascended other heights, 
descended, dived into basements, traversed passages, groped through 
labyrinths, ever asking the same question, ' Do you want a hand ?' 
and ever receiving the same reply, in various degrees of civility, 
'No.' He walked ten times as many miles as he needed, for he 
was not aware that nearly all the printing-offices in New York are 
in the same square mile. He went the entire length of many streets 
which any body could have told him did not contain one. 

He went home on Friday evening very tired and a little dis- 
couraged. 

Early on Saturday morning he resumed the search, and continued 
it with energy till the evening. But no one wanted a hand. Busi- 
ness seemed to be at a stand-still, or every office had its full comple- 
ment of men. On Saturday evening he was still more fatigued. 
He resolved to remain in the city a day or two longer, and then, if 



88 



ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK 



Still unsuccessful, to turn his face homeward, and inquire for work 
at the towns through which he passed. Though discouraged, he 
was not dislieartened, and still less alarmed. 

The youthful reader should observe here what a sense of inde- 
pendence and what fearlessness dwell in the spirit of a man who has 
learned the art of living on the mere necessaries of life. If Horace 
Greeley had, after another day or two of trial, chosen to leave the 
city, he would have carried with him about four dollars ; and with 
that sum he could have walked leisurely and with an unanxious 
heart all the way back to his father's house, six hundred miles, 
inquiring for work at every town, and feeling himself to be a free 
and independent American citizen, traveling on his own honestly- 
earned means, undegraded by an obhgation, the equal in social rank 
of the best man in the best house he passed. Blessed is the young 
man who can walk thirty miles a day, and dine contentedly on half 
a pound of crackers! Give him four dollars and summer weather, 
and he can travel and revel like a prince incog, for forty days. 

On Sunday morning, our hero arose, refreshed and cheerful. He 
went to church twice, and spent a happy day. In the morning he 
induced a man who lived in the house to accompany him to a small 
Uuiversalist church in Pitt street, near the Dry Dock, not less than 
three miles distant from M'Gorlick's boarding-house. In the evening 
he found his way to a Unitarian church. Except on one occasion, 
he had never before this Sunday heard a sermon which accorded 
with his own religious opinions ; and the pleasure with which he 
heard the benignity of the Deity asserted and proved by able men, 
was one of the highest he had enjoyed. 

In the afternoon, as if in reward of the pious way in which he 
spent the Sunday, he heard news which gave him a faint hope of 
being able to remain in the city. An Irishman, a friend of the 
landlord, 'came in the course of the afternoon to pay his usua^ Sun- 
day visit, and became acquainted with Horace and his fruitless 
search for work. He was a shoemaker, I believe, but he lived in a 
house which was much frequented by journeymen printers. From 
them he had heard that hands were wanted at West's, No. 85 Chat- 
ham street, and he recommended his new acquaintance to make 
immediate application at that office. 

Accustomed to country hours, and eager to seize the chance, 



HE HEARS OF A VACANCY. 89 

Horace was in Chatham street and on the steps of the designaiof 
nouse hy lialf-]>ast five on Monday morning. West's printing office 
was in the second story, the ground tioor being occupied by Mc- 
Elrath and Bangs as a bookstore. They were publishers, and West 
was their printer. Neither store nor oflSce was yet opened, and 
Horace sat down on the steps to wait. 

Had Thomas McEh-ath, Esquire, happened to pass on an early 
walk to the Battery that morning, and seen our hero sitting on those 
steps, with his red bundle on his knees, his pale face supported on 
his hands, his attitude expressive of dejection and anxiety, his attire 
extremely unornamental, it would not have occurred to Thomas Mc- 
Elratl), Esquire, as a probable event, that one day he would be the 
PAETNEE of that sorry figure, and proud of the connection ! Nor did 
Miss Reed, of Philadelphia, when she saw Benjamin Franklin pass 
her father's house, eating a large roll and carrying two others under 
his arms, see in that poor wanderer any likeness to her future hus- 
band, the husband that made her a proud and an immortal wife. 
The princes of the mind always remain incog, till they come to the 
throne, aud, doubtless, the Coming Man, when he comes^ will appear 
in a strange disguise, and no man will know him. 

It seemed very long before any one came to work that morning 
at Ko. 85. The steps on which our friend was seated were in the 
narrow part of Chatham-street, the gorge through which at morn- 
ing and evening the swarthy tide of mechanics pours. By six 
o'clock the stream has set strongly down-town- ward, and it gradu- 
ally swells to a torrent, bright with tin kettles. Thousands passed 
by, but no one stopped till nearly seven o'clock, when one of Mr. 
"West's journeymen arrived, and finding the door still locked, he sat 
down on the steps by the side of Horace Greeley. They fell into 
conversation, and Horace stated his circumstances, something of his 
history, and his need of employment. Luckily this journeyman waj 
a Yermonter, and a kind-hearted, intelligent man. He looked upon 
Horace as a countryman, and was struck with the singular candor 
aud artlessness with which he told his tale. " I saw," says he, " that 
he was an honest, good young man, and being a Vermonter myself, 
1 determined to help him if I could." 

He did help him. The doors were opened, the men began to 
arrive ; Horace and his newly-found friend ascended to the office. 



90 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. 

and soon After seven the work of tlie clay began. It is hardly neces- 
tsary to say that the appearance of Horace, as he sat in tlie oflSce 
waiting for the coming of the foreman, excited unbounded astonish- 
ment, and brougbt upon his friend a variety of satirical observations. 
TsTothing daunted^ however, on the arrival of the foreman he stated 
tlie case, and endeavored to interest him enough in Horace to give 
him a trial. It happened that the work for whicli a man was wanted 
in the ofBce was the composition of a Polyglot Testament; a kind 
of work which is extremely difficult and tedious. Several men had 
tried their hand at it, and, in a few days or a few hours, given it up. 
The foreman looked at Horace, and Horace looked at the foreman. 
Horace saw a handsome man (now known to the sporting public as 
Colonel Porter, editor of the Spirit of the Times.) The foreman 
beheld a youth who could have gone on the stage, that minute, as 
Ezekiel Homespun without the alteration of a thread or a hair, and 
brought down the house by his 'getting up' alone He no more 
believed that Ezekiel could set up a page of a Polyglot Testament 
than that he could construct a chronometer. However, partly to 
oblige Horace's friend, partly because he was unwilling to wound 
the feelings of the applicant by sending him abruptly away, he con- 
sented to let him try. " Fix up a case for him," said he, " and we '11 
eee if he can do anything." In a few minutes Horace was at 
work. 

The gentleman to whose intercession Horace Greeley owed his 
first employment in I^ew-York is now known to all the dentists in 
the Union as the leading member of a firm which manufactures 
annually twelve hundred thousand artificial teeth. He has made 
a fortune, the reader will be glad to learn, and lives in a mansion up 
town. 

After Horace had been at work an hour or two, Mr. West, the 
' boss,' came into the office. What his feelings were when he saw 
his new man, may be inferred from a little conversation upon the 
subject which took place between him and the foreman. 

" Did you hire that fool ?" asked West with no small irri- 
tation. 

"Yes; we must have hands, and he 's the best I could get," said 
the foreman, justifying h's conduct, though he was really ashamed 
of it. 



NICKNAMED " THE GHOST." 91 

"Well," said the master, "for God's sake pay him off to-night, 
and let liim go about his business." 

Horace worked through the day with his usual intensity, and ii; 
perfect silence. At night he presented to the foreman, as the cu8 
torn then was, the 'proof of his day's work What astonishment 
was depicted in the good-looking countenance of that gentleman 
when he discovered that the proof before him was greater in quan- 
tity, and more correct than that of any other day's work which 
had yet been done on the Polyglot ! There was no thought of send- 
ing the new journeyman about his business now. He was an es- 
tablished man at once. Thenceforward, for several months, Horace 
worked regularly and hard on the Testament, earning about six dol- 
lars a week. 

He had got into good company. There were about twenty men 
and boys in the office, altogether, of whom two have since been 
members of Congress, three influential editors, and several otherg 
have attained distinguished success in more private vocations. Most 
of them are still alive ; they remember vividly the coming among 
them of Horace Greeley, and are fond of describing his ways and 
works. The following paragraph the reader is requested to regard 
as the condensed statement of their several recollections. 

Horace worked with most remarkable devotion and intensity. 
His task was diflScult, and he was paid by the ' piece.' In order, 
therefore, to earn tolerable wages, it was necessary for him to work 
harder and longer than any of his companions, and he did so. 
Often he was at his case before six in the morning; often he 
had not left it at nine in the evening ; always, he was the first to 
begin and the last to leave. In the summer, no man beside him 
self worked before breakfast, or after tea. While the young men 
and older apprentices were roaming the streets, seeking their 
pleasure, he, by the light of a candle stuck in a bottle, was eking 
out a slender day's wages by setting up an extra column of the 
Polyglot Testament. 

For a day or two, the men of the oflaco eyed him askance, and 
winked at one another severely. The boys were more demonstra- 
tive, and one of the most mischievous among them named him 
The Ghost, in allusion to bis long white hair, and the singular fair- 
ness of his complexion. Soon, however, the men who workt^i ^ear 



92 ARRIVAL IN Ni:W YORK. 

liim began to suspect that liis mind was better furnished than hisi 
person. Horace always had a way of talking profusely while at 
work, and that, too, without working with less assiduity. Conver- 
sations soon <,rose about masonry, temperance, politics, religion ; 
and the new journeyman rapidly argued his way to respectful con- 
sideration. His talk was ardent, animated, and positive. He was 
perfectly confident of his opinions, and maintained them with an 
assurance that in a youth of less understanding and less geniality 
would have been thought arrogance. His enthusiasm at this time, 
was Henry Clay ; his great subject, masonry. In a short time, to 
^■lote the language of one his fellow-workmen, ' he was the lion of 
the shop.' Yet for all that, the men who admired him most would 
Qave their joke, and during all the time that Horace remained in 
ihe office, it was the standing amusement to make nonsensical re- 
marks in order to draw from him one of his shrewd, half-comic, 
Scotch-Irish retorts. " And we always got it," says one. 

The boys of the office were overcome by a process similar to that 
which frustrated the youth of Poultney. Four or five of them, 
who knew Horace's practice of returning to the office in the even- 
ing and working alone by candle-light, concluded that that would 
be an excellent time to play a few printing-office tricks upon him. 
They accordingly lay in ambush one evening, in the dark recesses 
of the shop, and awaited the appearance of the Ghost. He had no 
sooner lighted his candle and got at work, than a ball, made of 'old 
roller,' whizzed past his ear and knocked over his candle. He set 
it straight again and went on with his work. Another ball, and 
another, and another, and finally a volley. One hit his ' stick,' one 
scattered his type, another broke his bottle, and several struck his 
head. He bore it till the balls came so fast, that it was impossible 
for him to work, as all his time was wasted in repairing damages. 
At length, he turned round and said, without the slightest ill-humor, 
and in a supplicating tone, "Now, boys, don't. I want to work. 
Please, now, let me alone." The boys came out of their places ol 
concealment into the light of the candle, and troubled him no 
nore. 

Thus, it appears, that every man can best defend himself with 
the weapon that nature has provided him — whether it be fists or 
forgiveness. Little Jane Eyre was of opinion, that when anybody 



THE OBLIGING MAN OF THE OFFICE. 93 

has struck another, he should himself be struck; " *y hard," says 
Jane, "so hard, that he will be afraid ever to stri' ; anybody again." 
On the contrary, thought Horace Greeley, whe any one has wan- 
tonly or unjustly struck another, he should b*- ^o severely forgiven, 
and made so thoroughly asliamed of himself, .nat he will ever after 
shrink from striking a wanton or an unjust olow. Sound maxims, 
both ; the first, for Jane, the second, for Hjrace. 

His good humor was, in truth, naturally imperturbable. He was 
soon the recognized obliging man of the oflBce ; the person relied 
upon always when help was needed — a most inconvenient kind of 
reputation. Among mechanics, money is generally abundant enough 
on Siindays and Mondays ; and they spend it freely on those days. 
Tuesday and Wednesday, they are only in moderate circumstances. 
The last days of the week are days of pressure and borrowing, 
when men are in a better condition to be treated than to treat. 
Horace Greeley was the man who had money always; he was as 
rich apparently on Saturday afternoon as on Sunday morning, and 
as willing to lend. In an old memorandum-book belonging to one 
of his companions in those days, still may be deciphered such en- 
tries as these: 'Borrowed of Horace Greeley, 2s.' 'Owe Horace 
Greeley, 9s. 6d.' ' Owe Horace Greeley, 2s. 6d, for a breastpin.' 
He never refused to lend his money. To himself, he allowed scarce- 
ly anything in the way of luxury or amusement; unless, indeed, 
an occasional purchase of a small share in a lottery-ticket may be 
styled a luxury. 

Lotteries were lawful in those days, and Chatham-street was 
where lottery-offices most abounded. It was regarded as a per 
fectly respectable and legitimate business to keep a lottery-office, 
and a perfectly proper and moral action to buy a lottery -ticket. 
The business was conducted openly and fairly, and under official 
supervision ; not as it now is, by secret and irresponsible agents in 
all parts of the city and country. Whether less money, or more, 
is lost by lotteries now than formerly, is a question which, it is 
surprising, no journalist has determined. Whether they cause 
less or greater demoralization is a question which it were well 
for moralists to consider. 

Of the few incidents which occurred to relieve the monotony of 



94 ARRIVAL IN NBW YORK. 

the printing-office in Chatham street, the one which is most glee- 
fully remembered is the following : — 

Horace was, of course, subjected to a constant fire of jocular 
observations upon his dress, and frequently to practical jokes sug- 
gested by its deficiencies and redundancies. Men stared at him in 
tlie streets, and boys called after him. Still, however, he clung to 
his linen roundabout, his short trowsers, his cotton shirt, and his 
dilapidated hat. Still he wore no stockings, and made his wrist- 
bands meet with twine. For all jokes upon the subject he had deaf 
ears ; and if any one seriously remonstrated, he would not defend 
himself by explaining, that all the money he could spare was need- 
ed in the wilderness, six hundred miles away, whither he punctually 
sent it. September passed and October. It began to be cold, but 
our hero had been toughened by the winters of Vermont, and still 
he walked about in linen. One evening in November, when busi- 
ness was urgent, and all the men worked till late in the evening, 
Horace, instead of returning immediately after tea, as his custom 
was, was absent from the office for two hours. Between eight and 
nine, when by chance all the men were gathered about the ' com- 
posing stone,' upon which a strong light was thrown, a strange 
figure entered the office, a tall gentleman, dressed in a complete suit 
of faded broadcloth, and a shabby, over-brushed beaver hat, from 
beneath which depended long and snowy locks. Tlje garments 
were fashionably cut ; the coat was in the style of a swallow's 
tail; tlie figure was precisely that of an old gentleman who had 
seen better days. It advanced from the darker parts of the office, 
and emerged slowly into the glare around the composing stone. 
The men looked inquiringly. The figure spread out its hands, 
looked down at its habiliments with an air of infinite complacency, 
and said,— 

" Well, boys, and how do you like me now ?" 

" Why, it 's Greeley," screamed one of the men. 

It was Greeley, metamorphosed into a decayed gentleman by a 
second-hand suit of black, bought of a Chatham-street Jew for five 
dollars. 

A shout arose, such as had never before been heard at staid and 
regular 85 Chatham-street. Cheer upon cheer was given, and meu 



PRACTICAL JOKES. 95 

laughed till the tears came, the venerable gentleman being as happy' 
as the happiest. 

" Greeley, you must treat upon that suit, and no mistake/' said 
one. 

" Oh, of course," said everybody else. 

" Come along, boys ; I '11 treat," was Horace's ready response. 

All the company repaired to the old grocery on the corner of 
Duane-street, and there each individual partook of the beverage 
that pleased him, the treater indulging in a glass of spruce beer. 
Posterity may as well know, and take warning from the fact, that 
this five-dollar suit was a failure. It had been worn thin, and had 
been washed in blackened water and ironed smooth. A week's 
wear brought out all its pristine shabbiness, and developed new. 

Oar hero was not, perhaps, quite so indifierent to his personal ap- 
l)earance as he seemed. One day, when Colonel Porter happened 
to remark that his hair had once been as white as Horace Greeley's, 
Horace said with great earnestness, "Was it?" — as though he drew 
from that fact a hope that his own hair might darken as he grew 
older. And on another occasion, when he had just returned from a 
visit to New-Hampshire, he said, "Well, I have been up in the 
country among my cousins; they are all good-looking young men 
enough ; I do n't see why / should be such a curious-looking fel- 
low." 

One or two other incidents which occurred at West's are perhaps 
worth telling; for one well-authenticated fact, though apparently 
of trifling importance, throws more light upon character than pages 
of general reminiscence. 

It was against the rules of the office for a compositor to enter the 
press-room, which adjoined the composing-room. Our hero, how- 
ever, went on one occasion to the forbidden apartment to speak to 
a friend who worked there upon a hand-press that was exceedingly 
hard to pull. 

"Greeley," said one of the men, "you're a pretty stout fellow, 
but you can 't pull back that lever." 

" Can 't I ?" said Horace ; " I can." 

" Try it, then," said the mischief-maker. 

The press was arranged in such a manner that the lever offered 
ao resistance whatever, and, consequently, when Horace seized it^ 



96 ARRIVAL IN NB;W YORK. 

and collected all his strength for a tremendous effort, he fell back- 
wards on the floor with great violence, and brought away a large 
part of the press with him. There was a thundering noise, and all 
the house came running to see what was the matter. Horace got 
up, pale and trembling from the concussion. 

" Now, that was too bad," said he. 

He stood his ground, however, while the man who had played 
the trick gave the ' boss' a fictitious explanation of the mishap, with- 
out mentioning the name of the apparent offender. When all was 
quiet again, Horace went privately to the pressman and offered to 
pay his share of the damage done to. the press ! 

"With Mr. West, Horace had little intercourse, and yet they did 
on several occasions come into collision. Mr. West, like all other 
bosses and men, had a weakness ; it was commas. He loved com- 
mas, he was a stickler fur commas, he was irritable on the subject 
of commas, he thought more of commas than any other point of 
prosody, and above all, he was of opinion that he knew more about 
commas than Horace Greeley. Horace had, on his part, no objec- 
tion to commas, but he loved them in moderation, and was deter- 
mined to keep them in their place. Debates ensued. The journey- 
man expounded the subject, and at length, after much argument, 
convinced his employer that a redundancy of commas was possible, 
and, in short, that he, the journeyman, knew how to preserve the 
balance of power between the various points, without the assist- 
ance or advice of any boss or man in Chatham, or any other street. 
There was, likewise, a certain professor whose book was printed in 
the office, and who often came to read the proofs. It chanced that 
Horace set up a few pages of this book, and took the liberty of al- 
tering a few phrases that seemed to him inelegant or incorrect. The 
professor was indignant, and though he was not so ignorant as 
not to perceive that his language had been altered for the better, he 
thought it due to his dignity to apply opprobrious epithets to the 
impertinent compositor. The compositor argued the matter, but 
did not appease the great man. 

Soon after obtaining work, our friend found a better boarding- 
house, at least a more convenient one. On the corner of Duane- 
street and Chatham there was, at that time, a large building, oc- 
cupied below as a grocery and bar-room, the upper stories as a ' e- 



xxijfi shoemaker's boarding-house. 97 

cbanics' boarding-house. It accommodated about fifty boarders, 
most of whom were shoe-makers, who worked in their own rooms, 
or in shops at the top of the house, and paid, for room and board, 
two dollars and a half per week. This was the house to which 
Horace Greeley removed, a few days after his arrival in the city, 
and there he lived for more than two years. The reader of the 
Tribune may, perhaps, remember, that its editor lias frequently dis- 
jjlayed a particular acquaintance with the business of shoe-making, 
and drawn many illustrations of the desirableness and feasibility 
of association from the excessive labor and low wages of shoe- 
makers. It was at this house that he learned the mysteries of the 
craft. He was accustomed to go up into the shops, and sit among 
the men while waiting for dinner. It was here, too, that he obtain- 
ed that general acquaintance with the life and habits of city me- 
chanics, wliich has enabled hiin since to address them so wisely 
and so convincingly. He is remembered by those who lived with 
him there, only as a very quiet, thoughtful, studious young man, 
one who gave no trouble, never went out ' to spend the evening,* 
and read nearly every minute when be was not working or eating. 
The late Mr. Wilson, of the Brother Jonathan, who was his room- 
mate for some months, used to say, that often he went to bed leav- 
ing his companion absorbed in a book, and when he awoke in the 
morning, saw him exactly in the same position and attitude, as 
though he had not moved all night. He had not read all night, 
however, but had risen to his book with the dawn. Soon after 
sunrise, he went over the way to his work. 

Another of Mr. Wilson's reminiscences is interesting. The 
reader is aware, perhaps, from experience, that people who pay only 
two dollars and a half per week for board and lodging are not pro- 
vided with all the luxuries of the season ; and that, not unfrequent- 
ly, a desire for something delicious steals over the souls of boarders, 
particularly on Sundays, between 12, M. and 1, P.M. The eating- 
house revolution had then just begun, and the institution of Dining 
Down Town was set up ; in fact, a bold man established a Sixpenny 
Dining Saloon in Beekman-street, which was the talk of the sliops 
in the winter of 1831. On Sundays Horace and his friends, after 
their return from Mr. Sawyer's (Universalist) church in Orchard- 
street, were aocustomed to repair to this establishment, and indulge 
7 



98 ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK. 

in a splendid repast at a cost of, at least, one shilling each, rising 
on some occasions to eighteen pence. Their talk at dinner was of 
the soul-banquet, the sermon, of which they had partaken in the 
morning, and it was a custom among them to ascertain who could 
repeat the substance of it most correctly. Horace attended that 
church regularly, in those days, and listened to the sermon with 
his head bent forward, his eyes upon the floor, his arms folded, and 
one leg swinging, quite in his old class attitude at the Westhaven 
school. 

This, then, is the substance of what his companions remember 
of Horace Greeley's first few montlis in the metropolis. In a way 
so homely and so humble, New York's most distinguished citizen, 
the Country's most influential man, began his career. 

In his subsequent writings there are not many allusions of an au- 
tobiographical nature to this period. The following is, indeed, the 
only paragraph of the kind that seems worth quoting. It is valu- 
able as throwing light upon the habit of his mind at this time : — 

"Fourteen years ago, when the editor of the Tribune came to this city, 
there was published here a small daily paper entitled the ' Sentinel,' devoted 
to the cause of what was called by its own supporters ' the Working Men's 
Party,' and by its opponents ' the Fanny Wright Working Men.' Of that 
party we have little personal knowledge, but at the head of the paper, among 
several good and many objectionable avowals of principle, was borne the fol- 
lowing : 

" ' Single Districts Jhr the choice of each Senator and Member of Assembly.' 
*' We gave this proposition some attention at the time, and came to the con- 
clusion that it was alike sound and important. It mattered little to us that it 
was accompanied and surrounded by others that we could not assent to, and 
was propounded by a party with which we had no acquaintance and little sym- 
pathy. We are accustomed to welcome truth, from whatever quarter it may 
approach us, and on whatever flag it may be inscribed. Subsequent experience 
has fully confirmed our original impression, and now we have little doubt that 
this principle, which was utterly slighted when presented under unpopular 
auspices, will be engrafted on our reformed Constitution without serious oppO' 
sition."— rriiune, Dec, 1845. 



CHAPTER VII. 

FKOM OFFICE TO OFFICE. 

htiarea West's— Works on the * Evening Post'— Story of Mr. Leggett— * Commeroidl! 
Advertiser' — 'Spirit of the Times' — Specimen of his writing at this period— Natu- 
rally fond of the drama— Timothy Wiggins— Works for Mr. Redfleld— The first 
lift. 

HoEACE Greeley was a journeyman printer in this city for four- 
teen months. Those months need not detain us long from the more 
eventful periods of his life. 

He worked for Mr. West in Chatham street till about the first of 
November (1831). Then the business of that office fell olf, and he 
was again a seeker for employment. He obtained a place in the 
oflBce of the ' Evening Post,' whence, it is said^ he was soon dis- 
missed by the late Mr. Leggett, on the ground of his sorry appear- 
ance. The story current among printers is this : Mr. Leggett came 
into the printing-office for the purpose of speaking to the man whose 
place Horace Greeley had taken. 

" Where 's Jones ?" asked Mr. Leggett. 

" He 's gone away," replied one of the men. 

" Who has taken his place, then ?" said the irritable editor. 

" There 's the man," said some one, pointing to Horace, who was 
* bobbing' at the case in his peculiar way. 

Mr. Leggett looked at ' the man,' and said to the foreman, " For 
God's sake discharge him, and let 's have dQcent-looJcing men in the 
office, at least." 

Horace was accordingly — so goes the story — discharged at the 
end of the week. 

He worked, also, for a few days upon the ' Commercial Adver- 
tiser,' as a * sub,' probably. Then, for two weeks and a half, upon 
a little paper called ' The Amulet,' a weekly journal of literature 
and art. The ' Amulet' was discontinued, and our hero had to wait 
ten years for his wages. 

His next step can be given in his own words. The foUr ^ng is 



100 FROM OFFICE TO OFFICE. 

the beginning of a paragraph iu the Kew Yorker of March 2d^ 
1839: 

" Seven years ago, on the first of January last — that being a holi- 
day, and the writer being then a stranger with few social greetings 
to exchange in New York — he inquired his way into the ill-furnish- 
ed, chilly, forlorn-looking attic printing-office in which Wilham T. 
Porter, in company with another very young man, who soon after 
abandoned the enterprise, had just issued the 'Spirit of the Tini«s ' 
the first weekly journal devoted entirely to sporting intelligence 
ever attempted in this country. It was a moderate-sized sheet of 
indifferent paper, with an atrocious wood-cut for the bead — about 
as uncomely a specimen of the ' fine arts' as our ' native talent' has 
produced. The paper was about in proportion ; for neither of its 
conductors had fairly attained his majority, and each was destitute 
of the experience so necessary in such an enterprise, and of the 
funds and extensive acquaintance which were still more necessary 
to its success. But one of them possessed a persevering spirit and 
an ardent enthusiasm for the pursuit to which he had devoted him- 
self." 

And, consequently, the ' Spirit of the Times' still exists and flour- 
ishes, under the proprietorship of its originator and founder, Colonel 
Porter. For this paper, our hero, during his short stay in the office, 
composed a multitude of articles and paragraphs, most of them 
ehort and unimportant. As a specimen of his style at this period, 
I copy from the ' Spirit' of May 5th, 1832, the following epistle, 
which was considered extremely funny in those innocent days : 

" Messrs. Editors : — Hear me you shall, pity me you must, while I pro- 
ceed to give a short account of the dread calamities which this vile habit of 
turning the whole city upside down, 'tother side out, and wrong side before, 
on the First of May, has brought down on my devoted head. 

" You must know, that having resided but a few months in your city, I was 
totally ignorant of the existence of said custom. So, on the morning of the 
eventful, and to me disastrous day, I rose, according to immemorial usage, 
at the dying away of the last echo of the breakfast bell, and soon found ray- 
eelf seated over my coffee, and my good landlady exercising her powers of 
volubility (no weak ones) apparently in my behalf; but so deep was the rev- 
erie in which my half-awakened brain was then engaged, that I did not catch 
a single idea from the whole of her discourse. I smiled and said, "Yes, 
ma'am," "certainly ma'am," at each pause; and having speedily dispatched 



NATURALLY FOND OF THE DRAMA. 101 

my breakfast, sallied immediately out, and proceeded to attend to the busi- 
ness which engrossed my mind. Dinner-time came, but no time for dinner; 
and it was late before I was at liberty to wend my way, over wheel-barrows, 
barrels, and all manner of obstructions, towards my boarding-house. All here 
was still ; but by the help of my night-keys, I soon introduced myself to my 
chamber, dreaming of nothing but sweet repose ; when, horrible to relate ! 
my ears were instantaneously saluted by a most piercing female shriek, pro- 
ceeding exactly from my own bed, or at least from the place where it should 
have been ; and scarcely had sufficient time elapsed for my hair to bristle on 
my head, before the shriek was answered by the loud vociferations of a fero- 
cious mastiff in the kitchen beneath, and re-echoed by the outcries of half a 
dozen inmates of the house, and these again succeeded by the rattle of the 
watchman ; and the next moment, there was a round dozen of them (besides 
the dog) at my throat, and commanding me to tell them instantly what the 
devil all this meant. 

" You do well to ask that," said I, as soon as I could speak, " after falling 
upon me in this fashion in my own chamber." 

" take him oflF," said the one who assumed to be the master of the 
house; "perhaps he's not a thief after all; but, being too tipsy for starlight, 
he has made a mistake in trying to find his lodgings," — and in spite of all 
my remonstrances, I was forthwith marched off to the watch-house, to pass 
the remainder of the night. In the morning, I narrowly escaped commitment 
on the charge of 'burglary with intent to steal (I verily believe it would have 
gone hard with me if the witnesses could have been got there at that unseason- 
able hour), and I was finally discharged with a solemn admonition to guard 
for the future against intoxication (think of that, sir, for a member of the 
Cold Water Society !) 

" I spent the next day in unraveling the mystery ; and found that my land- 
lord had removed his goods and chattels to another part of the city, on the 
established day, supposing me to be previously acquainted and satisfied with 
his intention of so doing ; and another family had immediately taken his 
place ; of which changes, my absence of mind and absence from dinner had 
kept me ignorant ; and thus had I been led blindfold into a ' Comedy ' (or 
rather tragedy) of Errors. Your unfortunate, 

"Timothy Wiggins." 

His connection with the oflBce of a sporting paper procured hira 
occasionally an order for admission to a theater, which he used. 
He appeared to have had a natural liking for the drama ; all intel 
ligent persons have when they are young; and one of his compan- 
ions of that day remembers well the intense interest with which he 
once witne?^ed the performance of Richard III., at the old Chat- 



102 FROM OFFICE TO •OFFICE. 

liarn theater. At the close of the play, he said there was anothei 
of Shakespeare's tragedies which he had long wished to see, and 
that was Hamlet. 

Soon after writing his letter, the luckless Wiggins, tempted by 
the prospect of better wages, left the Spii-it of the Times, and went 
back to West's, and worked for some weeks on Prof. Bush's Notes 
on Genesis, ' the worst manuscript ever seen in a printing-office. 
That finished, he returned to the Spirit of the Times, and remained 
till October, when he went to visit his relatives in New Hampshire. 
He reached his uncle's farm in Londonderry in the apple-gathering 
season, and going at once to the orchard found his cousins engaged 
in that pleasing exercise. Horace jumped over the fence, saluted 
them in the hearty and unornamental Scotch -Irish style, sprang in- 
to a tree, and assisted them till their task for the day was done, and 
then all the party went frolicking into the woods on a grape-hunt 
Horace was a welcome guest. He was full of fun in those days, 
and kept the boys roaring with liis stories, or agape with descrip 
tions of city scenes. 

Back to the city again early in November, in time and on pur- 
pose to vote at the fall elections. 

He went to work, soon after, for Mr. J. S. Redfield, now an emi- 
nent publisher of this city, then a stereotyper. Mr. Redfield favors 
me with the following note of his connection with Horace Greeley: 
■ — " My recollections of Mr. Greeley extend from about the time he 
first came to the city to work as a compositor. I was carrying on 
the stereotyping business in William street, and having occasion one 
day for more compositors, one of the hands brought in Greeley, re- 
marking ' sotto voce ' as he introduced him, that he was a " boy- 
ish and rather odd looking genius," (to which remark I had no diffi- 
culty in assenting,) ' but he had understood that he was a good 
workman.' Being much in want of help at the time, Greeley was 
set to work, and I was not a little surprised to find on Saturday 
night, that his bills were much larger than those of any other com- 
positor in the office, and oftentimes nearly double those at work by 
the side of him on the same work. He would accomplish this, 
too, and talk all the time! The same untiring industry, and the 
iame fearlessness and independence, which have characterized his 



THE FIRST PENNY PAPER. 103 

course as Editor of the New York Tribune, were the distinguishing 
features of his character as a journeyman." 

He remained in the office of Mr. Redfield till late in December, 
when the circumstance occurred which gave him his first lift in 
the world. There is a tide, it is said, in the affairs of every man, 
once in his life, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. 

Horace Greeley's First Lift happened to take place in connection 
with an event of great, world-wide and lasting consequence; yet 
one which has never been narrated to the public. It shall, there- 
fore, have in this work a short chapter to itself. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FIRST PENNY PAPER — AND WHO THOUGHT OF IT. 

Importance of the cheap daily press— The origuiator of the idea— History of the idea 
— Dr. Sheppard'8 Chatham-street cogilatious — The Idea is conceived — It is born — 
Interview with Horace Greeley— The Doctor thinks he is ' no common boy'— The 
schemer baffled— Daily papers twenty-Sve years ago— Dr. Sheppard comes to a 
resolution— The firm of Greeley and Story— The Morning Post appears— And fails 
— The sphere of the cheap press — Fanny Fern and the pea-nut merchant. 

When the Historian of the United States shall have completed 
the work that has occupied so many busy and anxious years, 
and, in the tranquil solitude of his study, he reviews the long series 
of events which he has narrated, the question may arise in his 
mind, — Which of the events that occurred during the first seventy 
years of the Republic is likely to exert the greatest and most last- 
ing infiuence upon its future history ? Surely, he will not pause 
long for a reply. For, there is one event, which stands out so 
prominently beyond and above all others, the consequences of which, 
to this country and all other countries, must be so immense, and, 
finally, so beneficial, that no other can be seriously placed in com 
petition with it. It was the establishment of the first penny daily 
paper in the city of New York in the year 1833. Its results, in this 
r.<~»untry, ha'^^e already been wonderful indeed, and it is destined tc 



104 THE FIRST PENNy PAPER. 

play a great part in the history of every civilized nation, and in 
that of every nation yet to be civilized. 

Not that Editors are, in all cases, or in most, the wisest of men 
not that editorial writing has a greater value than hasty composition 
in general. Editors are a useful, a laborious, a generous, an honor- 
able class of men and women, and their writings have their due 
effect. But, that part of the newspaper which interests, awakens, 
moves, warns, inspires, instructs and educates all classes and con- 
ditions of people, the wise and the unwise, the illiterate and the 
learned, is the News ! And the News, the same news, at nearly the 
same instant of time, is communicated to all the people of this 
fair and vast domain which we inherit, by the instrumentality 
of the- Cheap Press, aided by its allies the Rail and the Wire. 

A catastrophe happens to-day in New York. New Orleans 
shudders to-morrow at the recital ; and the Nation shudders before 
the week ends. A ' Great Word,' uttered on any stump in the 
land, soon illuminates a million minds. A bad deed is perpetrated, 
and the shock of disgust flies with electric rapidity from city to 
city, from State to State — from the heart that records it to every 
heart that beats. A gallant deed or a generous one is done, or a 
fruitful idea is suggested, and it falls, like good seed which the 
wind scatters, over all the land at once. Leave the city on a 
day when some stirring news is rife, travel as far and as fast as 
you may, rest not by day nor night ; you cannot easily get where 
that News is not, where it is not the theme of general thought and 
talk, where it is not doing its part in informing, or, at least, exciting 
the public mind. Abandon the great lines of travel, go rocking in 
a stage over corduroy roads, through the wilderness, to the newest 
of new villages, a cluster of log-houses, in a field of blackened 
stumps, and even there you must be prompt with your news, or it 
will have flown out from a bundle of newspapers under the di'iver's 
seat, and fallen in flakes all over the settlement. 

The Cheap Press — its importance cannot be estimated ! It puts 
every mind in direct communication with the greatest minds, which 
all, in one way or another, speak through its columns. It brings the 
Course of Exents to bear on the progress of every individual. It is 
the great leveler, elevator and democraticizer. It makes this huge 
Commonwealth, else so heterogeneous and disunited, think with one 



THE ORIGINATOR OF THE IDEA. 105 

mind, feel with one heart, and talk with one tongue. Dissolve the 
Union into a hundred petty States, and the Press will still keep us. 
in heart and soul and habit, One People. 

Pardon this slight digression, dear reader. Pardon it, becaust 
the beginnings of the greatest things are, in appearance, so insig 
nificant, that unless we look at them in the light of their conse 
quences, it is impossible to take an interest in them. 

There are not, I presume, twenty-five persons alive, who know 
in whose head it was, that the idea of a cheap daily paper origin- 
ated. Nor has the proprietor of that head ever derived from his 
idea, which has enriched so many others, the smallest pecuniary 
advantage. He walks these streets, this day, an unknown man, and 
poor. His name — the reader may forget it, History will not — is 
Horatio Davis Sheppard. The story of his idea, amply confirmed 
in every particular by living and unimpeachable witnesses, is the 
following : 

About the year 1830, Mr. Sheppard, recently come of age and 
into the possession of fifteen hundred dollars, moved from his native 
New Jersey to New York, and entered the Eldridge Street Medical 
School as a student of medicine. He was ambitious and full of 
ideas. Of course, therefore, his fifteen hundred dollars hurned in his 
vest pocket — (where he actually used to carry it, until a fellow stu- 
dent almost compelled him to deposit it in a place of safety). He 
took to dabbling in newspapers and periodicals, a method of getting 
rid of superfluous cash, which is as expeditious as it is fascinating. 
He soon had an interest in a medical magazine, and soon after, a 
share in a weekly paper. By the time he had completed his medi- 
cal studies, he had gained some insight into the nature of the news- 
paper business, and lost the greater part of his money. 

People who live in Eldridge street, when they have occasion to 
go 'down tovvn,' must necessarily pass through Chatham street, a 
thoroughfare which is noted, among many other things, for the ex- 
traordinary number of articles which are sold in it for a ' penny a 
piece.' Apple-stalls, peanut-stalls, stalls for the sale of oranges, 
melons, pine-apples, cocoanuts, chestnuts, eandy, shoe-laces, cakes, 
pocket-combs, ice-cream, suspenders, lemonade, and oysters, line 
the sidewalk. In Chatham street, those small trades are carried on, 
on a scale of magnitude, with a loudness of vociferation, and a 



106 THE FIRST PENNff- PAPER. 

flare of lamp-light, nnknown to any other part of the towD. Along 
Chatham street, our medical student ofttimes took his way. musing 
on the instability of fifteen hundred dollars, and observing, possibly 
envying, the noisy merchants of the stalls. He was struck with 
the rapidity with which they sold their penny ware. A small boy 
would sell half a dozen penny cakes in the course of a minute. 
The dif erence between a cent, and no money, did not seem to be 
apprec'ated by the people. If a person saw something, wanted it, 
knew the price to be only a cent, he was almost as certain to buy 
it as though it were offered him for nothing. Now, thought he, to 
make a fortune, one has nothing more to do than to produce a 
tempting article which can be sold profitably for a cent, place it 
wliere everybody can see it, and buy it, without stopping — and lo ! 
the thing is done ! If it were only j)0ssible to produce a small, spicy 
/laily paper for a cent, and get boys to sell it about the streets, how 
it would sell ! How many pennies that now go for cakes and pea- 
nuts would be spent for news and paragraphs ! 

The idea was born— the twin ideas of the penny paper ana the 
newsboy. But, like the young of the kangaroo, they crawled into 
the mental pouch of the teeming originator, and nestled there for 
months, before they were fully formed and strong enough to con- 
front the world. 

Perhaps it is possible, continued the musing man of medicine, on 
a subsequent walk in Chatham street. He went to a paper ware- 
bouse, and made inquiries touching the price of the cheaper kinds 
of printing paper. He figured up the cost of composition. He 
computed office expenses and editorial salaries. He estimated the 
probable circulation of a penny paper, and the probable income to 
be derived from advertising. Surely, he could sell four or five 
thousand a day ! There^ for instance, is a group of people ; suppose 
a boy were at this moment to go up to them with an armful of pa- 
pers, ' only one cent,' I am positive, thought the sanguine projector, 
that six of the nine would buy a copy ! His conclusion was, that 
he could produce a newspaper about twice the size of an average 
sheet of letter-paper, half paragraphs and half advertisements, and 
fiell it at a cent per copy, with an ample profit to himself. He was 
iure of it ! He had tried all his arithmetic upon the project, and 
the figures gave the same result always. The twins leape'^ from 



DAILY PAPERS TWENTY-FI-VE YEARS AGO. 107 

the pouch, and taking their progenitor by the throat, led him a fine 
dance before he could shake them off. For the present, they pos- 
sessed him wholly. 

As most of his little inheritance had vanished, it was necossarj 
for him to interest some one in the scheme who had either capital 
or a printing office. The Spirit of the Times was then in its infan- 
cy. To the office of that paper, where Horace Greeley was then a 
journeyman, Mr. Sheppard first directed his steps, and there he 
.first unfolded his plans and exhibited his calculations. Mr. Greeley 
was not present on his first entrance. He came in soon after, and 
began telling in high glee a story he had picked up of old Isaac Hill, 
who used to read his speeches in the House, and one day brought the 
wrong speech, and got upon his legs, and half way into a swelling ex- 
ordium before he discovered his mistake. The narrator told his sto- 
ry extremely well, taking off the embarrassment of the old gentleman 
as he gradually came to the knowledge of his misfortune, to the life. 
The company were highly amused, and Mr. Sheppard said to him- 
self, "That 's no common &<?2/." Perhaps it was an unfortunate mo- 
ment to introduce a bold and novel idea ; but it is certain that every 
individual present, from the editor to the devil, regarded the notion 
of a penny paper as one of extreme absurdity, — fooHsh, ridiculous, 
frivolous ! They took it as a joke, and the schemer took his 
leave. 

Nor is it at all surprising that they should have regarded ic in 
that light. A daily newspaper in those days was a solemn thing. 
People in moderate circumstances seldom saw, never bought one. 
The price was ten dollars a year. Cut the present Journal of Com- 
merce in halves, fold it, fancy on its second page half a column of 
serious editorial, a column of news, half a column of business and 
shipping intelligence, and the rest of the ample sheet covered with 
advertisements, and you have before your mind's eye the New York 
daily paper of twenty-five years ago. It "vas not a thing for the 
people ; it appertained to the counting-house ; it was taken by the 
wholesale dealer; it was cumbrous, heavy, solemn. The idea of 
making it an article to be cried about the streets, to be sold for a 
cent, to be bought by workingmen and boys, to come into competi- 
tion with cakes and apples, must have seemed to the respectable 
New Yorkers of 1831, unspeakably absurd. When the respectable 



J^Q3 THE FIRST PENJfT PAPER. 

New Yorker first saw a penny paper, he gazed at It (I saw him) 
with a feeling similar to that with which an ill-natured man may 
be supposed to regard General Tom Thumb, a feeling of mingled 
curiosity and contempt ; he put the ridiculous little thing into his 
waistcoat pocket to carry home for the amusement of his family ; 
and he wondered what nonsense would be perpetrated next. 

Dr. Sbeppard — he had now taken his degree — was not disheart- 
ened by the merry reception of his idea at the office of the Spirit of the 
Times. He went to other offices — to nearly every other office ! For 
eighteen months it was his custom, whenever opportunity offered, 
to expound his project to printers and editors, and, in fact, to any 
one who would listen to him long enough. He could not conmnce 
one man of the feasibility of Ms scheme., — not one ! A few people 
thought it a good idea for the instruction of the million, and recom- 
mended him to get some society to take hold of it. But not a 
human being could be brought to believe that it would pay as a 
business, and only a few of the more polite and complaisant printers 
could be induced to consider the subject in a serious light at all. 

Reader, possessed with an Idea, reader, 'in a minority of one,' 
take courage from the fact. 

Despairing of getting the assistance he required. Dr. Sbeppard 
resolved, at length, to make a desperate effort to start the paper 
himself. His means were fifty dollars in cash and a promise of 
credit for two hundred dollars' worth of paper. Among his 
printer friends was Mr. Francis Story, the foreman of the Spirit 
of the Times office, who, about that time, was watching for 
an opportunity to get into business on his own account. To him 
Dr. Sbeppard announced his intention, and proposed that he should 
establish an office and print tlie forthcoming paper, offering to pay 
the bill for composition every Saturday. Mr. Story hesitated ; but, 
on obtaining from Mr. Sylvester a promise of the printing of his 
Banh Note Reporter.^ he embraced Dr. Sheppard's proposal, and 
offered Horace Greeley, for whom he had long entertained a warm 
friendship and a great admiration, an equal share in the enterprise. 
Horace was not favorably impressed with Dr. Sheppard's scheme. 
In the first place, he had no great faith in the practical ability of 
that gentleman ; and, secondly, he was of opinion that the smallest 
price for which a daily paper could be profitabiV gold was two cents. 



THE FIRM OF GREELEY AND STORY. 109 

His arguments on the latter point did not convince the ardent doc- 
tor; but, with the hope of overcoming his scruples and enlisting 
his co-operation, he consented to give up his darling idea, and iix 
the price of his paper at tw^o cents. Horace Greeley agreed, at 
length, to try his fortune as a master printer, and in December, the 
firm of Greeley and Story was formed. 

Now, experience has since proved that two cents is the best price 
for a cheap paper. But the point, the charm, the impudence of Dr, 
Sheppard's project all lay in those magical words, 'Price Onb 
Cent,' which his paper was to have borne on its heading — but did 
not. And the capital to be invested in the enterprise was so ludi- 
crously inadequate, that it was necessary for the paper to pay at^once, 
or cease to appear. Horace Greeley's advice, therefore, though good 
as a general principle, was not applicable to the case in hand. Not 
that the proposed paper would, or could, have succeeded upon any 
terms. Its failure was inevitable. Dr. Sheppard is one of those 
projectors who have the faculty of suggesting the most valuable and 
fruitful ideas, without possessing, in any degree, the qualities need- 
ful for their realization. 

The united capital of the two printers was about one hundred and 
fifty dollars. They were both, however, highly respected in the print- 
ing world, and both had friends among those whose operations keep 
that world in motion. They hired part of a small office at No. 54 
Liberty street. Horace Greeley's candid story prevailed with Mr. 
George Bruce, the great type founder, so far, that he gave the new 
firm credit for a small quantity of type — an act of trust and kindness 
which secured him one of the best customers he bas ever had. (To 
this day the type of the Tribune is supplied by Mr. Bruce.) Before 
the new year dawned, Greeley and Story were ready to execute 
every job of printing which was not too extensive or intricate, on 
favorable terms, and'with the utmost punctuality and dispatch. 

On the morning of January 1st, 1833, the Morning Post, and a 
snow-storm of almost unexampled fury, came upon the town together. 
The snow was a wet blanket upon the hopes of newsboys and car- 
riers, and quite deadened the noise of the new paper, filling up 
areas, and burying the tiny sheet at the doors of its few subscribers- 
For several days the streets were obstructed with snow. It was 
very coW. There were few people in the streets, and those few 



110 THE FIRST PENN^ PAPER. 

were not easily tempted to stop and fumble in their pockets for two 
cents. The newsboys were soon discouraged, and were fain to run 
shivering home. Dr. Sheppard was wholly unacquainted with the 
details of editorship, and most of the labor of getting up the num- 
bers fell upon Mr, Greeley, and they were produced under every 
conceivable disadvantage. Yet, with all these misfortunes and 
drawbacks, several hundred copies were daily sold, and Dr. Shep- 
pard was able to pay all the expenses of the first week. On the 
second Saturda}', however, he paid his printers half in money and 
half in promises. On the third day of the third week, the faith 
and the patience of Messrs. Greeley and Story gave out, and the 
' Morning Post' ceased to exist. 

The last two days of its short life it was sold for a cent, and the 
readiness with which it was purchased convinced Dr. Sheppard, 
but him alone, that if it had been started at that price, it would not 
have been a failure. His money and his credit were both gone, 
and the error could not be retrieved. He could not even pay his 
printers the residue of their account, and he had, in consequence, 
to endure some emphatic observations from Mr. Story on the mad- 
ness and presumption of his scheme. " Did n't I tell you so ?" said 
the other printers. " Everybody," says Dr. Sheppard, " abused me, 
except Horace Greeley. He spoke very kindly, and told me not to 
mind what Story said." The doctor, thenceforth, washed his 
hands of printers' ink, and entered upon the practice of his pro- 
fession. 

Nine months after, the Sun appeared, a penny paper, a dingy 
sheet a little larger than a sheet of letter paper. Its success demon- 
strated the correctness of Dr. Sheppard's calculations, and justified 
the enthusiasm with which he had pursued his Idea. The oflBce 
from which the Sun was issued was one of the last which Dr. 
Sheppard had visited for the purpose of enlisting co-operation. 
Neither of the proprietors was present, but the ardent schemer ex- 
pounded his plans to a journeyman, and thus planted the seed which, 
in September, produced fruit in the form of the Sun, which ' shines 
for all.' 

This morning, the cheap daily press of this city has issued a hun- 
dred and fifty thousand sheets, the best of which contain a history 
of the world for one day, so completely given, so intelligently com 



FANNY FERN AND THE PEA-NUT MERCHANT. Ill 

mented upon, as to place the New York Press at the head of the 
journalism of the world. The Cheap Press, be it observed, had; 
first of all, to create itself^ and, secondly-, to create its Public. The 
papers of the old school have gone on their way prospering. They 
are read by the class that read them formerly. But — mark that 
long line of hackraen, each seated on his box waiting for a customer, 
and each reading his morning yayer ! Observe the paper that is 
thrust into the pocket of the omnibus driver. Look into shops and 
factories at the dinner hour, and note how many of the men are 
reading their newspaper as they eat their dinner. All this is new. 
All this has resulted from the Chatham-street cogitations of Hora- 
tio Davis Sheppard. 

A distinguished authoress of this city relates the following cir- 
cumstance, which occurred last summer : 

THE MAX WHO DOES TAKE THE PAPER. 

To the Editor of The J\r. Y. Tribune. 

Sir : — Not long since I read in your paper an article headed " the man 
who never took a newspaper." In contrast to this I would relate to you a 
little incident which came under my own observation : 

Having been disappointed the other morning in receiving that part of my 
breakfast contained in The N. Y. Daily Tribune, I dispatched a messenger 
to see what could be done in the way of satisfaction. After half an hour's 
diligent search he returned, much to my chagrin, empty-handed. Recollecting 
an old copy set me at school after this wise : " If you want a thing done do it 
yourself," I seized my bonnet and sallied forth. Not far from my domicil 
appears each morning, with the rising sun, an old huckster-man, whose stock 
in trade consists of two empty barrels, across which is thrown a pro tern 
counter in the shape of a plank, a pint of pea-nuts, six sticks of peppermint 
candy, half a dozen choleric looking pears and apples, copies of the daily 
papers, and an old stubby broom, with which the owner carefully brushes up 
the nut-shells dropped by graceless urchins to the endangerment of his side- 
walk lease. 

"Have you this morning's Tribune?" said I, looking as amiable as 1 
knew how. 

" No Ma'am" was the decided reply. 

" Why — yes, you have," said I, laying my hand on the desired number. 

"Well, you cavH have ihat^ Ma'am," said the disconcerted peanut mer 
chant, "for I haven't read it myself!" 

" I '11 give you three cents for it," said I. 



112 THE FIRM COKTINCES. 

(A shake of the head ) 

" Four cents ?" 

(Another shake.) 

"Sixpence?" (I was getting excited.) 

" It 's no use, Ma'am," said the persistent old fellow. " It 's the only num- 
ber I could get. and I tell you that nobody shall have that Tribune till I have 
read it myself !" 

You should have seen, Mr. Editor, the shapeless hat, the mosaic coat, the 
tattered vest, and the extraordinary pair of trousers that were educated up 
to that Tribune — it was a picture ! Fannv Febn. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE FIRM CONTINUES 

Lottflry printing — The Constitutionalist— Dudley S. Gregory— The lottery suicide— 
The firm prospers— Sudden death of Mr. Story— A new partner— Mr. Greeley as a 
master— A dinner story— Sylvester Graham— Horace Greeley at the Graham 
House— The New Yorker projected— Jamea Gordon Bennett. 

The firm of Greeley and Story was not seriously injured by the. 
failure of the Morning Post. They stopped printing it in time, and 
their loss was not more than fifty or sixty dollars. Meanwhile, 
their main stay was Sylvester's Bank Note Reporter, which yielded 
about fifteen dollars' worth of composition a week, payment for which 
was sure and regular. In a few weeks Mr. Story was fortunate 
enough to procure a considerable quantity of lottery printing. This 
was profitable work, and the firm, thenceforth, paid particular at- 
tention to that branch of business, and our hero acquired great dex- 
terity in setting up and arranging the list of prizes and drawings. 

Among other things, they had, for some time, the printing of a 
small tri-weekly paper called the Constitutionalist^ which was the 
organ of the great lottery dealers, and the vehicle of lottery news, a 
small, dingy quarto of four pages, of which one page only wa," 
devoted to reading matter, the rest being occupied by lotier* 
tables and advertisements. The heading of this interesting per.i 



DUDLEV S. GREGORY. 113 

odical was as follows : " The Constitutionalist, Wilmington, Dela- 
ware. Devoted to the Interests of Literature, Internal Improve- 
ment, Common Schools, &c., &c." The last half square of the last 
column of the Constitutionalist's last page contained a standing 
advertisement, which read thus: — 

" Greeley and Story, No. 54 Liberty-street, New York, respectfully 
solicit the patronage of the public to their business of Letter-Presa 
Printing, particularly Lottery Printing, such as schemes, periodicals, 
&c., which will be executed on favorable terms." 

Horace Greeley, who had by this time become an inveterate 
paragraphist, and was scribbler-general to the circle in which he 
moved, did not disdain to contribute to the first page of the Con- 
stitutionalist. The only set of the paper which has been preserved 
I have examined ; and though many short articles are pointed out 
by its proprietor, as written by Mr. Greeley, I find none of the 
slightest present interest, and none which throw any light upon 
his feelings, thoughts or habits, at the time when they were writ- 
ten. He wrote well enough, however, to impress his friends with 
a high idea of his talent ; and his prompt fidelity in all his transac- 
tions, at this period, secured him one friend, who, in addition to a 
host of other good qualities, chanced to be the possessor, or wielder, 
of extensive means. This friend, at various subsequent crises of 
our hero's life, proved to be a friend indeed, because a friend in 
need. They sat together, long after, the printer and the patron, in 
the representative's hall at Washington, as members of the thirtieth 
Congress. Why shall I not adorn this page by writing on it the 
name of the kindly, the munificent Dudley S. Gregory, to whose 
wise generosity, Jersey City, and Jersey citizens, owe so much ; in 
whose hands large possessions are far more a public than a private 
good? 

Mr. Gregory was, in 1833, the agent or manager of a great lottery 
association, and he had much to do with arranging the tables and 
schemes published in the Constitutionalist. This brought him in 
contact with the senior member of the firm of Greeley and Story, 
to whose talents his attention was soon called by a particular circum- 
stance. A young man, wlio had lost all his property by the lot- 
tery, in a moment of desperation committed suicide. A great hue 
and cry arose all over the country against lotteries ; and many 



114 THE FIRM CONTINUES. 

newspapers cli.niored for their suppression by law. The lottery 
dealers were alarmed. In tlie midst of this excitement, Horace 
Greeley, while standing at the case, composed an article on the 
subject, the purport of which is said to have been, that the argu- 
ment for and against lotteries was not affected by the suicide of that 
young man; but it simply proved, that he, the suicide, was a per- 
son of weak character, and had nothing to do with the questic n 
whether the State ought, or ought not, to license lotteries. Tl is 
article was inserted in one of the lottery papers, attracted consid<r- 
able attention, and made Mr. Gregory aware that his printer w as 
not an ordinary man. Soon after, Mr. Greeley changed his op a- 
ion on the subject of lotteries, and advocated their suppress! )n 
by law. 

Greeley and Story were now prosperous printers. Their busing ^s 
steadily increased, and they began to accumulate capital. The ter n 
of their copartnership, however, was short. The great dissolver < f 
partnerships. King Death himself, dissolved theirs in the seven -h 
month of its existence. On the 9th of July, Francis Story we it 
down the bay on an excursion, and never returned alive. He w}.s 
drowned by the upsetting of a boat, and his body was brought back 
to the city the same evening. There had existed between the^e 
young partners a warm friendship. Mr. Story's admiration of the 
character and talents of our hero amounted to enthusiasm ; and 
he, on his part, could not but love the man who so loved him. When 
he went up to the coflBn to look for the last time on the marble 
features that had never turned to his with an unkind expression, he 
said, " Poor Story ! shall I ever meet with any one who will bear 
.^ith me as he did?" To the bereaved family Horace Greeley be- 
haved with the most scrupulous justice, sending Mr. Story's mother 
half of all the little outstanding accounts as soon as they were paid, 
and receiving into the vacant place a brother-in-law of his deceased 
partner, Mr. Jonas Winchester, a gentleman now well known to the 
press and the people of this country. 

A short time before, he had witnessed the marriage of Mr. Win- 
chester by the Episcopal form. He was deeply impressed with the 
ceremony, listening to it in an attitude expressive of the profoundest 
interest; and when it was over, he exclaimed aloud, ''That's the 



SYLVESTER GRAHAM. 115 

most beautiful service I ever saw. If ever I am married it shall be 
by that form." 

The business of " Greeley and Co." went on prospering through 
the year ; but increase of means made not the slightest difference 
in our hero's habits or appearance. His indifference to dress was 
a clironic complaint, and the ladies of his partner's family tried in 
■^ain to coax and laugh him into a conformity with the usages of 
society. They hardly succeeded in inducing him to keep his shirt 
buttoned over his white bosom. " He was always a clean man, vou 
know," says one of them. There was not even the show or pre- 
tence of discipline in the office. One of the journeymen made an 
outrageous caricature of his employer, and showed it to him one 
day as he came from dinner. "Who's that?" asked the man. 
" That 's me," said the master, with a smile, and passed in to his 
work. The men made a point of appearing to differ in opinion from 
him on every subject, because they liked to hear him talk ; and, 
one day, after a long debate, he exclaimed, " Why, men, if I were 
to say that that black man there was black, you 'd all swear he was 
white." He worked with all his former intensity and absorption. 
Often, such conversations as these took place in the office about the 
middle of the day : 

(H. G., looking up from his work)— Jonas, have I been to dinner? 

(Mr. Winchester)— You ought to know best. I do n't know 

(H. G.) — John, have I been to dinner? 

(John) — I believe not. Has he, Tom? 

To which Tom would reply ' no,' or ' yes,' according to his own 
recollection or John's wink; and if the office generally concurred in 
Tom's -decision, Horace would either go to dinner or resume his 
work, in unsuspecting accordance therewith. 

It was about this time that he embraced the first of his two 
" isms" (he has never had but two). Graham arose and lectured, 
and made a noise in the world, and obtained followers. The sub- 
stance of his message was that We, the people of the United States, 
are in the habit of taking our food in too concentrated a form. 
Bulk is necessary as well as nutriment; brown bread is better 
than white; and meat should be eaten only once a day, or never, 
said the Rev. Dr. Graham. Stimulants, he added, were pernicious, 
and their apparent necessity arises solely from too concentrated, and 



116 THE FIRM CONTINUES. 

therefore indigestible food. A simple message, and one most obvi 
ously true. The wonder is, not that he should have obtained fol- 
lowers, but that there should have been found one human being so 
besottedly ignorant and so incapable of being instructed as to deny 
the truth of his leading principles. Graham was a remarkable man. 
He was one of those whom nature has gifted with the power of 
taking an interest in human welfare. He was a discoverer of the 
facts, that most of us are sick, and that none of us need be ; that 
disease is impious and disgraceful^ the result, in almost every in- 
stance, of folly or crime. He exonerated God from the aspersions 
cast upon His wisdom and goodness by those who attribute disease 
to His " mysterious dispensations," and laid all the blame and shame 
of the ills Xhsit flesh endures at the door of those who endure them. 
Graham was one of the two or three men to whom this nation 
might, with some propriety, erect a monument. Some day, perhaps, 
a man will take the trouble to read Graham's two tough and wordy 
volumes, and present the substance of them to the public in a form 
which will not repel, but win the reader to perusal and convic- 
tion. 

Horace Greeley, hke every other thinking person that heard Dr. 
Graham lecture, was convinced that upon the whole he was right. 
He abandoned the use of stimulants, and took care in selecting his 
food, to see that there was the proper proportion between its bulk 
and its nutriment ; i. e. he ate Graham bread, little meat, and plen- 
ty of rice, Indian meal, vegetables and fruit. He went, after a time, 
to board at the Graham house, a hotel conducted, as its name im- 
ported, on Graham principles, the rules and regulations having 
been written by Dr. Graham himself. The first time our friend ap- 
peared at the table of the Graham House, a silly woman who lived 
there tried her small wit upon him. 

" It 's lucky," said she to the landlady, " that you 've no cat in 
the house." 

u ^jjy ?M asked the landlady. 

" Because," was the killiTig reply, " if you had, the cat would cer- 
tainly take that man with the white head for a gosling, and fly at 
him." 

Gentlemen who boarded with him at the Graham House, remem- 
ber him as a Portentious Anomaly, one who, on ordinary occasions, 



EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. 117 

said nothing, but was occasionally roused to most vehement argu* 
ment ; a man much given to reading and cold-water baths. 

In tlie beginning of the year 1834, the dream of editorship re- 
vived in the soul of Horace Greeley. A project for starting a week- 
ly paper began to be agitated in the office. The firm, which then 
consisted of three members, H. Greeley, Jonas Winchester, and E. 
Sibbett, considered itself worth three thousand dollars, and was fur- 
ther of opinion, that it contained within itself an amount of edito- 
rial talent sufficient to originate and conduct a family paper supe- 
rior to any then existing. The firm was correct in both opinions, 
and the result was — the New Yorker. 

An incident connected with the job office of Greeley & Co. is, 
perhaps, worth mentioning here. One James Gordon Bennett, a 
person then well known as a smart writer for the press, came to 
Horace Greeley, and exhibiting a fifty-dollar bill and some other 
notes of smaller denomination as his cash capital, invited him to 
join in setting up a new daily paper, the New York Herald. Our 
hero declined the ofi'er, but recommended James Gordon to apply 
to another printer, naming one, who he thought would like to 
share in such an enterprise. To him the editor of the Herald did 
apply, and with success. The Herald appeared soon after, under 
the joint proprietorship of Bennett and the printer alluded to. Up- 
on the subsequent burning of the Herald office, the partners sepa- 
rated, and the Herald was thenceforth conducted by Bennett alone. 



CHAPTER X. 

EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. 

Character of the Paper— Its Early Fortunes— Happiness of the Editor— Scene in the Of- 
fice—Specimens of Horace Greeley's Poetry— Subjects of his Essays— His Opiniona 
then— His Marriage— The Silk-stocking Story— A day in Washington— His impress- 
ions of the Senate— Pecuniary difficulties— Causes of the New-Yorker's ill-success 
as a Business— The missing letters— The Editor gets a nickname— The Agonies 
of a Debtor— Park Benjamin— Henry J. Raymond. 

Luckily for the purposes of the present writer, Mr. Greeley is 
the most autobiographical of editors. He takes his readers into his 



118 EDITOR OF THE KEW YORKER. 

confidence, his sanctum, and his iron safe. He has not the least ob« 
jection to tell the public the number of his subscribers, the amount 
of his receipts, the excess of his receipts over his expenditures, or 
the excess of his expenditures over his receipts. Accordingly, the 
whole history of the New Yorker, and the story of its editor's joys 
and sorrows, his trials and his triumphs, lie plainly uid fully writ- 
ten in the New Yorker itself. 

The New Yorker was, incomparably, the best newspaper of its 
kind that had ever been published in this country. It was printed, 
at first, upon a large folio sheet; afterwards, in two forms, folio and 
quarto, the former at two dollars a year, the latter at three. Its 
contents were of four kinds ; literary matter, selected from home 
and foreign periodicals, and well selected ; editorial articles by the 
editor, vigorously and courteously expressed ; news, chiefly politi- 
cal, compiled with an accuracy new to American journalism ; city, 
literary, and miscellaneous paragraphs. The paper took no side in 
politics, though the ardent convictions of the editor were occasion 
ally manifest, in spite of himself. The heat and fury of some of 
his later writings never characterize the essays of the New Yorker. 
He was always gentle, however strong and decided ; and there was 
a modesty and candor in his manner of writing that made the sub- 
scriber a friend. For example, in the very first number, announc- 
ing the publication of certain mathematical books, he says, " As we 
are not ourselves conversant with the higher branches of mathemat- 
ics, we cannot pretend to speak authoritatively upon the merits of 
these publications" — a kind of avowal which omniscient editors are 
not prone to make. 

A paper, that lived long, never stole into existence more quietly 
than the New Yorker. Fifteen of the personal friends of the edi- 
tors had promised to become subscribers; and when, on the 22d ot 
March, 1834, the first number appeared, it sold to the extent of one 
hundred copies. No wonder. Neither of the proprietors had any 
reputation with the public ; all of them were very young, and the 
editor evidently supposed that it was only necessary to make a good 
paper in order to sell a great many copies. The ' Publishers' Ad 
dress,' indeed, expressly said : — 

** There is one disadvantage attending our delnU which is seldom enoou;) 



SCENE IN THE OFFICE. 119 

tered in the outset of periodicals ajpiring to general popularity and patron- 
age. Ours is not blazoned through the land as, 'The Cheapest Periodical iu 
the World,' 'The Largest Paper ever Published,' or any of the captivating 
clap-traps wherewith enterprising gentlemen, possessed of a convenient stock 
of assurance, are wont to usher in their successive experiments on the gulli- 
bility of the Public. No likenesses of eminent and favorite authors will em- 
bellish our title, while they disdain to write for our columns. No ' distin- 
guished literary and fashionable characters ' have been dragged in to bolste* 
up a rigmarole of preposterous and charlatan pretensions. And indeed so 
serious is this deficiency, that the first (we may say the only) objection which 
has been started by our most judicious friends in the discussion of our plana 
md prospects, has invariably been this : — ' You do not indulge sufficiently in 
high-sounding pretensions. You cannot succeed without humbug.' Our an- 
swer has constantly been : — ' We shall try,' and in the spirit of this deter- 
mination, we respectfully solicit of our fellow-citizens the extension of that 
share of patronage which they shall deem warranted by our performances 
rather than our promises." 

The public took the New Yorker at its word. The second num- 
ber had a sale of nearly two hundred copies, and for three months, 
the increase averaged a hundred copies a week. In September, the 
circulation was 2,500 ; and the second volume began with 4,500. 
During the first year, three hundred papers gave the New Yorker 
a eulogistic notice. The editor became, at once, a person known 
and valued throughout the Union. He enjoyed his position thor- 
oughly, and he labored not more truly with all his might, than with 
all his heart. 

The spirit in which he performed his duties, and the glee with 
which he entered into the comicalities of editorial life, cannot be 
more agreeably shown than by transcribing his own account of a 
Scene which was enacted in the oflBce of the New Yorker, soon 
after its establishment. The article was entitled 'Editorial Lux- 
uries.' 

We love not the ways of that numerous class of malcontents who are per- 
petually finding fault with their vocation, and endeavoring to prove them- 
selves the most miserable dogs in existence. If they really think so, why 
under the sun do they not abandon their present evil ways and endeavor to 
hit upon something more endurable 1 Nor do we not deem these grumbler« 
more plentiful among the brethren of the quill than in other professions, sim 
ply because the groaniugs uttered through the press are more widely circu 



120 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. 

lated than ^hen merely breathed to the night-air of some unsympathiring 
friend who forgets all about them the next minute ; but we do think the whole 
business is in most ridiculously bad taste. An Apostle teaches us of " groaninga 
which cannot be uttered"— it would be a great relief to readers, if editorial 
groanings were of this sort. Now, we pride ourselves rather on the delight! 
of our profession ; and we rejoice to say, that we find them neither few noi 
inconsiderable. There is one which even now flitted across our path, which, 
to tell the truth, was rather above the average — in fact, so good, that we can 
not afford to monopolize it. even though we shall be constrained to allow oui 
reader a peep behind the curtain. So, here it is : 

[Scene. Editorial Sanctuo* — Editor solus — i. e. immersed in thought and 
newspapers, with a journal in one hand and busily spoiling white paper with 
the other — only two particular friends talking to him at each elbow. Devil 
calls for 'copy' at momentary intervals. Enter a butternut-colored gentle* 
man, who bows most emphatically.] 

Gent. Are you the editor of the New Yorker, sir 7 

Editor. The same, sir, at your service. 

Gent. Did you write this, sir 7 

Editor. Takes his scissored extract and reads — ' So, when we hear the 
brazen vender of quack remedies boldly trumpeting his miraculous cures, or 
the announcement of the equally impudent experimenter on public credulity 
(Goward) who announces, that he 'teaches music in six lessons, and half a 
dozen distinct branches of science in as many weeks,' we may be grieved, and 
even indignant, that such palpable deceptions of the simple and unwary should 
not be discountenanced and exposed.' 

That reads like me, sir. I do not remember the passage ; but if you found 
l*; in the editorial columns of the New Yorker, I certainly did write it. 

Gent. It was in No. 15. " The March of Humbug." 

Editor. Ah ! now I recollect it — there is no mistake in my writing that 
article. 

Gent. Did you allude to me, sir, in those remarks 7 

Editor. You will perceive that the name ' Goward* has been introduced 
by yourself — there is nothing of the kind in my paper. 

Gent. Yes, sir ; but I wish to know whether you intended those remarks to 
apply to me. 

Editor. Well, sir, without pretending to recollect exactly what I may have 
been thinking of while writing an article three months ago, I will frankly say, 
that I think I must have had you in my eye while penning that paragraph 

Gent. "Well, sir, do you know that such remarks are grossly unjust and im 
pertinent to me 7 

Ed'ior. I know nothing of you, sir, but from the testimony of friends ana 
your own advertisements in the papers — and these combine to assure me 
that } ou are a quack. 



HORACE Greeley's poetry. 121 

Gent. That is what my enemies say, sir; but if you examine my certl- 
llrates, sir, you will know the contrary. 

Editor. I am open to conviction, sir. 

Gent. Well, sir, I have been advertising in the Traveler for some time, 
and have paid them a great deal of money, and here they come out this week 
and abuse me — so, I have done with them ; and, now, if you will say you will 
not attack me in this fashion, I will patronize you (holding out some tempt- 
ing advertisements). 

Editor. Well, sir, I shall be very happy to advertise for you ; but I can 
give no pledge as to the course I shall feel bound to pursue. 

Gent. Then, I suppose you will continue to call me a quack. 

Editor. I do not know that I am accustomed to attack my friends and 
patrons ; but if I have occasion to speak of you at all, it shall be in such 
terms as my best judgment shall dictate. 

Gent. Then, I am to understand you iis my enemy. 

Editor. Understand me as you please, sir ; I shall endeavor to treat you 
and all men with fairness. 

Gent. But do you suppose I am going to pay money to those who ridicule 
me and hold me up as a quack? 

Editor. You will pay it where you please, sir — I must enjoy my opinions. 

Gent. Well, but is a man to be judged by what his enemies say of him 7 
Every man ha^ his enemies. 

Editor. I hope not, sir ; I trust I have not an enemy in the world. 

Gent. Yes, you have — / 'm your enemy ! — and the enemy of every one who 
misrepresents me. I can get no justice from the press, except among the 
penny dailies. I '11 start a paper myself before a year. I '11 show that 
Bome folks can edit newspapers as well as others. 

Editor. The field is open, sir, — go ahead. 

[Exit in a rage. Rev. J. R. Goward, A. M., Teacher 
(in six lessons) of everything.] 

Another proof of the happiness of the early days of our hero's 
editorial career might be found in the habit he then had of writing 
verses. It will, perhaps, surprise some of his present readers, who 
know him only as one of the most practical of writers, one given 
to politics, sub-soil plows, and other subjects supposed to be unpo 
etical, to learn that he was in early life a very frequent, and by no 
means altogether unsuccessful poetizer. Many of the early numbers 
of the New-Yorker contain a poem by " H. G." He has published, 
in all, about thirty-five poems, of which the New-Yorker contains 
twenty; the rest may be found in the Southern Literary Messenger, 
and various other magazines, annuals, and occasional volumes. ] 



122 EDITOR OF THE NBW YORKER. 

have seen no poem of bis which does not contain the material of 
poetry — thought, feehug, fancy; but in few of them was the poet 
enabled to give his thought, feehng and faacy complete expression. 
A specimen or two of his poetry it would be an unpardonable omis- 
sion not to give, in a volume like this, particularly as his poetic 
[)eriod is past. 

The following is a tribute to the memory of one who was the ideal 
hero of his youthful politics. It was published in the first number 
of the New-Yorker : 

ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM WIRT. 

Rouse not the muffled drum, 
Wake not the martial trumpet's mournful sound 

For him whose mighty voice in death is dimb ; 
Who, in the zenith of his high renown, 

To the grave went down. 

Invoke no cannon's breath 
To swell the requiem o'er his ashes poured — 
Silently bear him to the house of death : — 
The aching hearts by whom he was adored, 

He won not with the sword. 

No ! let affection's tear 
Be the sole tribute to his memory paid ; 
Earth has no monument so justly dear 
To souls like his in purity arrayed — 

Never to fade. 

I loved thee, patriot Chief! 
I battled proudly 'neath thy banner pure ; 

Mine is the breast of woe — the heart of grief, 
Which suffer on unmindful of a cure — 
Proud to endure. 

But vain the voice of wail 
For thee, from this dim vale of sorrow fled — 



123 

Earth has no spell whose magic shall not fail 
To light the gloom that shrouds thy narrow bed, 
Or uroo thee from the dead. 

Then take thy long repose 
Beneath the shelter of the deep green sod : 

Death but a brighter halo o'er thee throws — 
Thy fame, thy soul alJJce have spurned the clod- 
Rest thee in God. 

A series of poems, entitled " Historic Pencilings," appear in the 
first volume of the New Yorker, over the initials " H, G." These 
were the poetized reminiscences of his boyish historical reading. Of 
these poems the following is, perhaps, the most pleasing and char- 
acteristic : 

NERO'S TOMB. 

" When Nero perished by the iustest doom, 

Hf * * * * 

Some hand unseen strewed flowers upon his grave. 



Byron. 



The tyrant slept in death ; 
His long career of blood had ceased forever, 

And but an empire's execrating breath 
Remained to tell of crimes exampled never. 

Alone remained ? Ah ! no ; 
Rome's scathed and blackened walls retold the story 

Of conflagrations broad and baleful glow. 
Such was the halo of the despot's glory ! 

And round his gilded tomb 
Came crowds of sufferers— but not to weep — 

Not theirs the wish to light the house of gloom 
"With sympathy. No ! Curses wild and deep 

His only requiem made. 
But soft ! see, strewed around his dreamless bed 

The trophies bright of many a verdant glade, 
The living's tribute to the honored dead. 



124 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. 

What mean those gentle flowers ? 

So sweetly smiling in the face of wrath- 
Children of genial suns and fostering showers. 

Now crushed and trampled in the million's path — 
What do they, withering here ? 

Ah ! spurn them not ? they tell of sorrow's flow — 
There has been one to shed afiection's tear, 

And 'mid a nation's joy, to feel a pang of woe I 

No ! scorn them not, those flowers. 
They speak too deeply to each feeling heart — 

They tell that Guilt hath still its holier hours — 
That none may e 'er from earth unmourned depart ; 

That none hath all effaced 
The spell of Eden o 'er his spirit cast. 

The heavenly image in his features traced — 
Or quenched the love unchanging to the last! 

Another of the ' Historic Pencilings,' was on the 'Death of Per- 
icles.' This was its last stanza : — 

No ! let the brutal conqueror 

Still glut his soul with war, 
And let the ignoble million 

With shouts surround his car; 
But dearer far the lasting fame 

Which twines its wreaths with peace — 
Give me the tearless memory 

Of the mighty one of Greece. 

Only one of his poems seems to have been inspired by the ten- 
der passion. It is dated May 31st, 1834. Who this bright Vision 
was to whom the poem was addressed, or whether it was ever vis 
ible to iny but the poet's eye, has not transpired. 

FANTASIES. 

They deem me cold, the thoughtless and light-hearted, 
In that I worship not at beauty's shrine ; 



FANTASIES. 

Tliey deem rae cold, that through the years departed, 
I ne'er have bowed me to some form divhie. 

They deem me proud, that, where the world hath flattered, 
I ne'er have knelt to languish or adore ; 

They think not that the homage idly scattered 
Leaves the heart bankrupt, ere its spring is o'er. 

No ! in my soul there glows but one bright vision, 

And o'er my heart there rules but one fond spell, 
Bright'ning my hours of sleep with dreams Elysian 

Of one unseen, yet loved, aye cherished well ; 
Unseen ? Ah ! no ; her presence round me lingers. 

Chasing each wayward thought that tempts to rove ; 
Weaving Affection's vveh with fairy fingers. 

And waking thoughts of purity and love. 

Star of my heaven ! thy beams shall guide me ever, 

Though clouds obscure, and thorns bestrew my path ; 
As sweeps my bark adovvn life's arrowy river 

Thy angel smile shall soothe misfortune's wrath ; 
And ah ! should Fate ere speed her deadliest arrow, 

Should vice allure to plunge in her dark sea. 
Be this the only shield my soul shall borrow — 

One glance to Heaven — one burning thought of thee I 

1 ne'er on earth may gaze on those bright features, 

Nor drink the light of that soul-beaming eye ; 
But wander on 'mid earth's unthinking creatures, 

Unloved in life, and unlamented die ; 
But ne'er shall fade the spell thou weavest o'er me. 

Nor fail the star that liglits my lonely way ; 
Still shall the night's fond dreams that light restore me, 

Though Fate forbid its gentler beams by day. 

I have not dreamed that gold or gems adorn thee — 
That Flatt'ry's voice may vauni. thy matchless form; 

I little reck that worldlings all mp,y scorn thet, 
Be but thy soul still pure, thy r '-'li^'^^s waroi , 



125 



126 EDITOR OF THE IJEW YORKER. 

Be thine bright Intellect's unfading treasures, 

And Poesy's more deeply-hallowed spell, 
And Faith the zest which heightens all thy pleasures, 

With trusting love— Maid of my soul ! farewell ! 

One more poem claims place here, if from its autobiography ttl 
character alone. Those who believe there is such a thing as regen- 
eration, who know that a man can act and Kve in a disinterested 
spirit, will not read this poem with entire incredulity. It appeared 
in the Southern Literary Messenger for August, 1840. 

THE FADED STAPwS. 

I mind the time when Heaven's high dome 

Woke in my soul a wondrous thrill — 
When every leaf in Nature's tome 

Bespoke creation's marvels still ; 
When mountain cliff and sweeping glade, 

As morn unclosed her rosy bars, 
Woke joys intense — but naught e'er bade 

My heart leap up, like you, bright stars ! 

Calm ministrants to God's high glory ! 

Pure gems around His burning throne I 
Mute watchers o'er man's strange, sad story 

Of Crime and Woe through ages gone ! 
'Twas yours the mild and hallowing spell 

That lured me from ignoble gleams — 
Taught me where sweeter fountains swell 

Than ever bless the worldling's dreams. 

How changed was life ! a waste no more, 

Beset by Want, and Pain, and Wrong; 
Earth seemed a glad and fairy shore, 

Vocal with Hope's inspiring song. 
But ye, bright sentinels of Heaven ! 

Far glories of Night's radiant sky! 
Who, as ye gemmed the brow of Even, 

Has ever deemed Man born to die ? 

4i 4t * * 



SUBJECTS OF HIS ESSAYS. 127 

'Tis faded now, that wondrous grace 

That once on Heaven's forehead shone ; 
I read no more in Nature's face 

A soul responsive to my own. 
A dimness on my eye and spirit, 

Stern time has cast in hurrying by; 
Few joys my hardier years inherit, 

And leaden dullness rules the sky. 

Yet mourn not I — a stern, high duty 

Now nerves my arm and fires my brain ; 
Perish the dream of shapes of beauty, 

So that this strife be not in vain ; 
To war on Fraud entrenched with Power — 

On smooth Pretense and specious "Wrong — 
This task be mine, though Fortune lower; 

For this be banished sky and song. 

The subjects upon which the editor of the New Yorker tic^jd tc 
descant, as editor, contrast curiously with those upon which, as 
poet, he aspired to sing. Turning over the well-printed pages of 
that journal, we find calm and rather elaborate essays upon ' The 
Interests of Labor,' ' Our Relations with France,' ' Speculation,' 
' The Science of Agriculture,' ' Usury Laws,' ' The Currency,' ' Over- 
trading,' ' Divorce of Bank and State,' ' National Conventions,' ' In- 
ternational Copyright,' ' Relief of the Poor,' ' The Public Lands,' 
' Capital Punishment,' ' The Slavery Question,' and scores of others 
equally unromantic. There are, also, election returns given with 
great minuteness, and numberless paragraphs recording nomina- 
tions. The New Yorker gradually became the authority in the de- 
partment of political statistics. There were many people who did 
not consider an election ' safe,' or ' lost,' until they saw the figures 
in the New Yorker. And the New Yorker deserved this distinc- 
tion ; for there never lived an editor more scrupulous upon the 
point of literal and absolute correctness than Horace Greeley. To 
quote the language of a proof-reader — " If there is a thing that will 
make Horace furious, it is to have a name spelt wning, cr a mistake 



128 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. 

in election returns."' In fact, he was morbid on the subject, till 
time toughened him ; time, and proof-readers. 

The opinions which he expressed in the columns of the New 
Yorker are, in general, those to which he still adheres, though on a 
few subjects he used language which he would not now use. His 
opinions on those subjects have rather advanced than changed. 
For example : he is now opposed to the punishment of death in all 
cases, except when, owing to peculiar circumstances, the immediate 
safety of the comnmnity demands it. In June, 1836, he wrote : — 
" And now, having fully expressed our conviction that the punish- 
ment of death is one which should sometimes be inflicted, we may 
add, that we would have it resorted to as unfrequently as possible. 
Nothing, in our view, but cold-blooded, premeditated, unpalliated 
murder, can fully justify it. Let this continue to be visited with the 
sternest penalty." 

Another example. The following is part of an article on the 
Slavery Question, which appeared in July, 1834. It differs from 
his present writings on the same subject, not at all in doctrine, 
though very much in tone. Then, he thought the North the ag- 
gressor. Since then, we have had Mexican Wars, Nebraska bills, 
etc., and he now writes as one assailed. 

" To a philosophical observer, the existence of domestic servitude in one 
portion of the Union while it is forbidden and condemned in another, would 
indeed seem to afford no plausible pretext for variance or alienation. The 
Union was formed with a perfect knowledge, on the one hand, that slavery ex- 
isted at the south, and, on the other, that it was utterly disapproved and dis- 
countenanced at the north. But the framers of the constitution saw no reason 
for distrust and dissension in this circumstance. Wisely avoiding all discuss- 
ion of a subject so delicate and exciting, they proceeded to the formation of 
' a more perfect union,' which, leaving each section in the possession of its 
undoubted right of regulating its own internal government and enjoying its 
own speculative opinions, provided only for the common benefit and mutual 
well-being of the whole. And why should not this arrangement be satisfac- 
tory and perfect 7 Why should not even the existing evils of one section be 
left to the correction of its own wisdom and virtue, when pointed out by the 
unerring finger of experience 1 

* * ♦**:»!# If. 4c 

We entertain no doubt that the system of slavery is at the bottom of most 
of the evils which afflict the communities of the south — that it has occasioned 



HIS OPINIONS THEN. 



129 



the decline of Virginia, of Maryland, of Carolina. We see it even retarding 
the growth of the new State of Missouri, and causing her to fall far behind 
her sister Indiana in improvement and population. And we venture to assert, 
that if the objections to slavery, drawn from a correct and enlightened politic 
cal economy, were once fairly placed before the southern public, they would 
need no other inducements to impel them to enter upon an immediate and 
effective course of legislation, with a view to the ultimate extinction of the 
evil. But, right or wrong, no people have a greater disinclination to the lec- 
tures or even the advice of their neighbors ; and we venture to predict, that 
whoever shall bring about a change of opinion in that quarter, must, in this 
case, reverse the proverb which declares, that ' a prophet hath honor except 
in his own country.' " 

* * 4: :tc 4c 4i :|e 

After extolling the Colonization Society, and condemning the form- 
ation of anti-slavery societies at the North, as irritating and useless, 
the editor proceeds : — " We hazard the assertion, that there never 
existed two distinct races — so diverse as to be incapable of amalga- 
mation — inhabiting the same district of country, and in open and 
friendly contact with each other, that maintained a perfect equality 
of pohtical and social condition. * * * j^^ remains to be proved, 
that the history of the nineteenth century will afford a direct con- 
tradiction to all former experience. * * * We cannot close 
without reiterating the expression of our firm conviction, that it 
the African race are ever to be raised to a degree of comparative 
happiness, intelligence, and freedom, it must be in some other region 
than that which has been the theater of their servitude and degra- 
dation. They must ' come up out of the land of Egypt and out of 
the house of bondage ;' even though they should be forced to cross 
the sea in their pilgrimage and wander forty years in the wilder- 



Again. In 1835, he had not arrived at the Maine Law, but was 
feeling his way towards it. He wrote thus : 

*' Were we called upon to indicate simply the course which should be pursued 
for the eradication of this crying evil, our compliance would be a far easier 
matter. We should say, unhesitatingly, that the vending of alcohol, or of 
liquors of which alcohol forms a leading component, should be regulated by 
the laws which govern the sale of other insidious, yet deadly, poisons. It 
should be kept for sale oily by druggists, and dealt out in small portions, 
and with like regard to the 5haracter and ostensible purpose of the applicant 
9 



130 EDITOR OF THE KEW YORKER. 

as in the case of its counterpart. » * * * But ^e must cot forget, that 
we are to determine simply what may be done by the friends of temperance 
for the advancement of the noble cause in which they are engaged, rather 
than what the more ardent of them (with whom we are proud to rank our- 
selves) would desire to see accomplished. We are to look at things as they 
are; and, in that view, all attempts to interdict the sale of intoxicating liquors 
in our hotels, our country stores, and our steam-boats, in the present state 
of public opinion, must be hopelessly, ridiculously futile. * * * * xhe 
only available provision bearing on this branch of the traffic, which could be 
urged with the least prospect of success, is the imposition of a real license- 
tax — say from $100 to 81000 per annum — which would have the effect ol 
diminishing the evil by rendering less frequent and less universal the temp- 
tations which lead to it. But even that, we apprehend, would meet with 
strenuous opposition from so large and influential a portion of the community, 
fts to render its adoption and efficiency extremely doubtful." 

The most bold and stirring of his articles in the New Yorker, 
was one on the " Tyranny of Opinion," which was suggested by the 
extraordinary enthusiasm with which the Fourth of July was cel- 
ebrated in 1837. A part of this article is the only specimen of the 
young editor's performance, which, as a specimen, can find place in 
this chapter. The sentiments which it avows, the country has not 
yet caught up with ; nor will it, for many a year after the hand 
that wrote them is dust. After an allusion to the celebration, the 
article proceeds : 

" The great pervading evil of our social condition is the worship and the 
bigotry of Opinion. While the theory of our political institutions asserts or 
implies the absolute freedom of the human mind — the right not only of free 
thought and discussion, but of the most unrestrained action thereon within 
the wide boundaries prescribed by the laws of the land, yet the practical com- 
mentary upon this noble text is as discordant as imagination can conceive. 
Beneath the thin veil of a democracy more free than that of Athens in her 
glory, we cloak a despotism more pernicious and revolting than that of 
Turkey or China. It is the despotism of Opinion. Whoever ventures to 
] ropound opinions strikingly at variance with those of the majority, must be 
content to brave obloquy, contempt and persecution. If political, they ex- 
clude him from public employment aad trust; if religious, from social inter- 
course and general regard, if not from absolute rights. However moderately 
heretical in his political views, he cannot be a justice of the peace, an officer 
of the customs, or a lamp-lighter ; while, if he be positively and frankly 
skeptical in his theology, grave judges pronounce him incompetent to givi 



HIS MARRIAGE. 



131 



testimony in courts of justice, though his character for veracity be indubitable. 
That is but a narrow view of the subject which ascribes all this injustice to 
the errors of parties or individuals ; it flows naturally from the vice of the 
age and country — the tyranny of Opinion. It can never be wholly rectified 
until the whole community shall be brought to feel and acknowledge, that the 
only security for public liberty is to be found in the absolute and unqualified 
freedom of thought and expression, confining penal consequences to acts only 
which are detrimental to the welfare of society. 

" The philosophical observer from abroad may well be astounded by the 
gross inconsistencies which are presented by the professions and the conduct 
of our people. Thousands will flock together to drink in the musical periods 
of some popular disclaimer on the inalienable rights of man, the inviolability 
of the immunities granted us by the Constitution and Laws, and the invariable 
reverence of freemen for the majesty of law. They go away delighted with 
our institutions, the orator and themselves. The next day they may be en- 
gaged in 'lynching' some unlucky individual who has fallen under their 
sovereign displeasure, breaking up a public meeting of an obnoxious cast, or 
tarring and feathering some unfortunate lecturer or propagandist, whose 
views do not square with their own, but who has precisely the same right to 
enjoy and propagate his opinions, however erroneous, as though he inculcated 
nothing but what every one knows and acknowledges already. The shame- 
lessness of this incongruity is sickening ; but it is not confined to this glaring 
exhibition. The sheriff", town-clerk, or constable, who finds the political 
majority in his district changed, either by immigration or the course of 
events, must be content to change too, or be hurled from his station. Yet 
what necessary connection is there between his politics and his office ? Why 
might it not as properly be insisted that a town-officer should be six feet 
high, or have red hair, if the majority were so distinguished, as that he 
should think with them respecting the men in high places and the measures 
projected or opposed by them 7 And how does the proscription of a man in 
any way for obnoxious opinions diflfer from the most glaring tyranny 1" 

In the New Yorker of July 16th, 1836, may be seen, at the 
head of a long list of recent marriages, the following interesting an- 
nouncement : 

"In Immanuel church, Warrenton, North Carolina, on Tues- 
day morning, 5th inst., by Rev. William Norwood, Mr. Horace 
Greeley, editor of the New Yorker, to Miss Mary Y. Cheney, of 
Warrenton, formerly of this city." 

The lady was by profession a teacher, and to use the emphatic 
language of one of her friends, 'crazy for knowledge."' The ac 
quaintance had been formed at the Graham House, and was con- 



132 EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. 

tinued by correspondence after Miss Cheney, in the pursuit of hei 
vocation, had removed to North Carolina. Thither the lover hied ; 
the two became one, and returned together to New York. Tlioji 
were married, as he said he would be, by the Episcopal form. 
Sumptuous was the attire of the bridegroom ; a suit of fine black 
broadck)th, and " on this occasion only,"" a pair of silk stockings ! 
It appears that silk stockings and matrimony were, in his mind, as- 
sociated ideas, as rings and matrimony, orange blossoms and matri- 
mony, are in the minds of people in general. Accordingly, lie 
bought a pair of silk stockings ; but trying on his wedding suit pre- 
vious to his departure for the south, he found, to his dismay, that 
the stockings were completely hidden by the affluent terminations 
of another garment. The question now at once occurred to his log- 
ical mind, ' ^Vhat is the use of having silk stockings, if nobody can 
see that you have them V He laid the case, it is said, before his 
tailor, who, knowing his customer, immediately removed the diffi- 
culty by cutting away a crescent of cloth from the front of the 
aforesaid terminations, which rendered the silk stockings obvious 
to tlie most casual observer. Such is the story. And I regret 
that other stories, and true ones, highly honorable to his head 
and heart, delicacy forbids the telling of in this place. 

The editor, of course, turned his wedding tour to account in the 
way of his profession. On his journey southward, Horace Gree- 
ley first saw Washington, and was impressed favorably by the 
houses of Congress, then in session. He wrote admiringly of the 
Senate: — "That the Senate of the United States is unsurpassed in 
intellectual greatness by any body of fifty men ever convened, is 
a trite observation. A phrenologist would fancy a strong con- 
firmation of his doctrines in the very appearance of the Senate; 
a physiognomist would find it. The most striking person on the 
floor is Mr. Clay, who is incessantly in motion, and whose spare, 
erect form betrays an easy dignity approaching to majesty, and a 
perfect gracefulness, such as I have never seen equaled. His coun- 
tenance is intelligent and indicative of character; but a glance at 
his figure while his face was completely averted, would give assui* 
ance that he was no common man. Mr. Calhoun is one of the 
plainest men and certainly the dryest, hardest speaker I ever 
listened to. The flow of his ideas reminded me of a barrel filled 



PECUNIARY DIFFICULTIES. 133 

with pebbles, each of which must find great difficulty in escaping 
from the very solidity and number of those pressing upon it and 
impeding its natural motion. Mr. Calhoun, though far from being 
a handsome, is still a very remarkable personage ; but Mr. Benton 
has the least intellectual countenance I ever saw on a senator. Mr. 
Webster was not in his place." * * * * u r^j^^ ^^^^ 
speech was that of Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky. That man is not 
appreciated so highly as he should and must be. He has a 
rough readiness, a sterling good sense, a republican manner and 
feeling, and a vein of biting, though homely satire, which will 
yet raise Lim to distinction in the National Councils.*' 

Were Greeley and Co, making their fortune meanwhile ? Far 
from it. To edit a paper well is one thing ; to make it pay as a 
business is another. The New Yorker had soon become a famous, 
an admired, and an influential paper. Subscriptions poured in ; the 
establishment looked prosperous ; but it was not. The sorry tale 
of its career as a business is very fully and forcibly told in the vari- 
ous addresses to, and chats with. Our Patrons, which appear in the 
volumes of 183Y, that 'year of ruin,' and of the years of slow re- 
covery from ruin which followed. In October, 1837, the editor 
thus stated his melancholy case : 

" Ours is a plain story ; and it shall be plainly told. The New Yorker was 
established with very moderate expectations of pecuniary advantage, but 
with strong hopes that its location at the head-quarters of intelligence for the 
continent, and its cheapness, would insure it, if well conducted, such a patron- 
age as would be ultimately adequate, at least, to the bare expenses of its pub- 
lication. Starting with scarce a shadow of patronage, it had four thousand 
five hundred subscribers at the close of the first year, obtained at an outlay of 
three thousand dollars beyond the income in that period. This did not mate- 
rially disappoint the publishers' expectations. Another year passed, and their 
subscription increased to seven thousand, with a further outlay, beyond all re- 
ceipts, of two thousand dollars. A third year was commenced with two edi- 
tions — folio and quarto — of our journal ; and at its close, their conjoint sub- 
scriptions amounted to near nine thousand five hundred ; yet our receipts had 
again fallen two thousand dollars behind our absolutely necessary expendi- 
tures. Such was our situation at the commencement of this year of ruin ; 
and we found ourselves wholly unable to continue our former reliance on the 
honor and ultimate good faith of our backward subscribers. Two thousand five 
hundred of them were stricken from our list, and every pcssible retrenchment of 



134 EDITOR OF THE 'NEW YORKER 

our expenditures efiFected. With the exercise of the most parsimonious frugal 
ity, and aided by (he extreme kindness and generous confidence of our friends, 
we have barely and with great difi&culty kept our bark afloat. For the future, we 
have no resource but in the justice and generosity of our patrons. Our humble 
portion of this world's goods has long since been swallowed up in the all-devour- 
ing vortex ; both of the Editor's original associates in the undertaking have 
abandoned it with loss, and those who now fill their places have invested to the 
full amount of their ability. Not a farthing has been drawn from the concern 
by any one save for services rendered ; and the allowance to the proprietore 
having charge respectively of the editorial and publishing departments has 
been far less than their services would have commanded elsewhere. The last six 
months have been more disastrous than any which preceded them, as we have 
continued to fall behind our expenses without a corresponding increase of pat- 
ronage. A large amount is indeed due us ; but we find its collection almost 
impossible, except in inconsiderable portions and at a ruinous expense. All 
appeals to the honesty and good faith of the delinquents seem utterly fruit- 
less. As a last resource, therefore, and one beside which we have no alterna- 
tive, we hereby announce, that from and after this date, the price of the New 
Yorker will be three dollars per annum for the folio, and four dollars for the 
quarto edition. 

" Friends of the New Yorker ! Patrons ! we appeal to you, not for charity, 
but for justice. Whoever among you is in our debt, no matter how small the 
sum, is guilty of a moral wrong in withholding the payment. We bitterly 
need it — we have a right to expect it. Six years of happiness could not atone 
for the horrors which blighted hopes, agonizing embarrassments, and gloomy 
apprehensions — all arising in great measure from your neglect — have con- 
spired to heap upon us during the last six months. We have borne all in si- 
lence : we now tell you we must have our pay. Our obligations for the next 
two months are alarmingly heavy, and they must be satisfied, at whatever sac- 
rifice. We shall cheerfully give up whatever may remain to us of property, 
and mortgage years of future exertion, sooner than incur a shadow of dishonor, 
by subjecting those who have credited us to loss or inconvenience. We must 
pay ; and for the means of doing it we appeal most earnestly to you. It ia 
possible that we might still further abuse the kind solicitude of our friends ; 
but the thought is agony. We should be driven to what is but a more delicate 
mode of beggary, when justice from those who withhold the hard earnings of 
our unceasing toil would place us above the revolting necessity ! At any rate, 
we will not submit to the humiliation without an eflfort. 

" We have struggled until we can no longer doubt that, with the present 
currency — and there seems little hope of an immediate improvement — we can- 
not live at our former prices. The suppression of small notes was a blow to 
cheap city papers, from which there is no hope of recovery. With a currency 
Including notes of two and three dollars, one half our receipts would come to 



PECUNIARY DIFFICULTIES. 135 

US directly from the subscribers ; without such notes, we must sibmit to an 
agent's charge on nearly every collection. Besides, the notes from the South 
Western States are now at from twenty to thirty per cent, discount; and have 
been more : those from the West range from six to twenty. All notes beyond 
the Delaware River range from twice to ten times the discount charged upon 
them when we started the New Yorker. We cannot afford to depend exclu- 
sively upon the patronage to be obtained in our immediate neighborhood ; we 
cannot retain distant patronage without receiving the money in which alone 
our subscribers can pay. But one course, then, is left us — to tax our valuable 
patronage with the delinquencies of the worse than worthless — the paying for 
the non-paying, and those who send us par-money, with the evils of our pres- 
ent depraved and depreciated currency." 

Two years after, there appeared another chapter of pecuniary his- 
tory, written in a more hopeful strain. A short extract will com- 
plete the reader's knowledge of the subject : 

" Since the close of the year of ruin (1837), we have pursued the even tenor 
of our way with such fortune as was vouchsafed us ; and, if never elated with 
any signal evidence of popular favor, we have not since been doomed to gaze 
fixedly for months into the yawning abyss of Ruin, and feel a moral certainty 
that, however averted for a time, that must be our goal at last. On the con- 
trary, our affairs have slowly but steadily improved for some time past, and 
we now hope that a few months more will place us beyond the reach of pecu- 
niary embarrassments, and enable us to add new attractions to our journal. 

" And this word ' attraction' brings us to the confession that the success of 
our enterprise, if success there has been, has not been at all of a pecuniary 
cast thus far. Probably we lack the essential elements of that very desirable 
kind of success. There have been errors, mismanagement and losses in the 
conduct of our business. We mean that we lack, or do not take kindly to, the 
arts which contribute to a newspaper sensation. When our journal first ap- 
peared, a hundred copies marked the extent to which the public curiosity 
claimed its perusal. Others establish new papers, (the New World and Brother 
Jonathan Mr. Greeley might have instanced,) even without literary reputa- 
tion, as we were, and five or ten thousand copies are taken at once — ^just to 
see what the new thing is. And thence they career onward on the crest of a 
towering wave. 

*' Since the New Yorker was first issued, sevrn copartners in its publication 
have successively withdrawn from the concern, generally, we regret to say, 
without having improved their fortunes by the connection, and most of them 
with the conviction that the work, however valuable, was not calculated to 
prove lucrative to its proprietors. ' You don't humbug enough,' has been 
the complaint of more than one of our retiring ivgsociates ; 'you ought to 



136 EDITOR OF THE .NEW YORKER. 

make more noise, and vaunt your own merits. The world will never believe 
you print a good paper unless you tell them so.' Our course has not been 
changed by these representations. We have endeavored in all things to 
maintain our self-respect and deserve the good opinion of others ; if we have not 
succeeded in the latter particular, the failure is much to be regretted, but hardly 
to be amended by pursuing the vaporous course indicated. If our journal be a 
good one, those who read it will be very apt to discover the fact ; if it be not, 
our assertion of its excellence, however positive and frequent, would scarcely 
outweigh the weekly evidence still more abundantly and convincingly fur- 
nished. We are aware that this view of the case is controverted by practical 
results in some cases ; but we are content with the old course, and have never 
envied the success which Merit or Pretense may attain by acting as its own 
trumpeter." 

The New Yorker never, during the seven years of its existence 
became profitable ; and its editor, during the greater part of the 
time, derived even his means of subsistence either from the business 
of job printing or from other sources, which will be alluded to in a 
moment. The causes of the New Yorker's signal failure as a busi- 
ness seem to have been these : 

1. It was a very good paper, suited only to the more intelligent 
class of the community, which, in all times and countries, is a small 
class. " We have a pride," said the editor once, and truly, " in be- 
lieving that we might, at any time, render our journal more attrac- 
tive to the million by rendering it less deserving ; and that by merely 
considering what would be sought after and read witii avidity, with- 
out regard to its moral or its merit, we might easily become popu- 
lar at the mere expense of our own self-approval." 

2. It seldom praised, never puffed, itself. The editor, however, 
seems to have thought, that he might have done both with pro- 
priety. Or was he speaking in pure irony, when he gave the Mirror 
this 'first-rate notice.' " There is one excellent quality," said he, 
'' which has always been a characteristic of the Mirror — the virtue 
of self-appreciation. We call it a virtue, and it is not merely one 
in itself, but the parent of many others. As regards our vocation, 
it is alike necessary and just. The world should be made to under- 
stand, that the aggregate of talent, acquirement, tact, industry, and 
general intelligence which is required to sustain creditably the char- 
acter of a public journal, might, if judiciously parceled out, form 
uhe stamina of» at least, one professor of languages, two brazen lee- 



137 

turers on science, ethics, or phrenolog}', and three average congress 
ional or other demagogues. Why, then, should starvation wave 
his skeleton scepter in terrorem over such a congregation of avail- 
able excellences?" 

3. The leading spirit of the New Yorker had a singular, a consti- 
tutional, an incurable inability to conduct business. His character 
is the exact opposite of that ' hard man ' in the gospel, who reaped 
where he had not sown. He was too amiable, too confiding, toe 
absent, and too ' easy,' foj- a business man. If a boy stole his let- 
ters from the post-oflBce, he would admonish him, and either let him 
go or try him again. If a writer in extremity offered to do certain 
paragraphs for three dollars a week, he would say, "No, that's too 
little; I '11 give you five, till you can get something better." On 
one occasion, he went to the post-office himself, and receiving a 
large number of letters, put them, it is said, into the pockets of 
Lis overcoat. On reaching the office, he hung the overcoat on its 
accustomed peg, and was soon lost in the composition of an article. 
It was the last of the chilly days of spring, and he thought no more 
either of his overcoat or its pockets, till the autumn. Letters kept 
coming in complaining of the non-receipt of papers which had been 
ordered and paid for ; and the office was sorely perplexed. On the 
first cool day in October, when the editor was shaking a summer's 
dirt from his overcoat, the missing letters were found, and the mys- 
tery was explained. Another story gives us a peep into the office 
of the New Yorker. A gentleman called, one day, and asked to 
see the editor. " I am the editor," said a little coxcomb who was 
temporarily in charge of the paper. "You are not the person 1 
want to see," said the gentleman. "Oh!" said the puppy, "you 
wish to see the Printer. He 's not in town." The men in the com- 
posing-room chanced to overhear this colloquy, and thereafter, our 
liero was called by the nickname of "'The Printer,' and by that 
alone, whether he was present or absent. It was "Printer, how 
will you have this set?" or "Printer, we're waiting for copy." All 
this was very pleasant and amiable ; but, businesses which pay are 
never carried on in that style. It is a pity, but a fact, that busi- 
nesses which pay, are generally conducted in a manner which is 
exceedingly disagreeable to those who assist in them. 

4. The Year of Ruin. 



138 iJDITOR OF THE NEW YCRKER. 

' 5. The ' cauh principle,' the only safe one, had not be^n yet ap- 
plied to the newspaper business. The New Yorker lost, on an aver 
age, 1,200 dollars a year by the removal of subscribers to parts 
unknown, who left without paying for their paper, or notifying the 
office of their departure. 

Of the unnumbered pangs that mortals know, pecuniary anxiety 
is to a sensitive and honest young heart the bitterest. To live up- 
on the edge of a gulf that yawns hideously and always at our feet 
to feel the ground giving way under the house that holds our hap- 
piness, to walk in the pathway of avalanches, to dwell under a 
volcano rumbling prophetically of a coming eruption, is not pleas- 
ant. But welcome yawning abyss, welcome earthquake, avalanche, 
volcano ! They can crush, and burn, and swallow a man, but not 
degrade him. The terrors they inspire are not to be compared 
with the deadly and withering Fear that crouches sullenly in the 
soul of that honest man who owes much money to many people, 
and cannot think how or when he can pay it. That alone has 
power to take from life all its charm, and from duty all its interest. 
For other sorrows there is a balm. That is an evil unmingled, 
while it lasts ; and the light which it throws upon the history of 
mankind and the secret of man's struggle with fate, is purchased 
at a price fully commensurate with the value of that light. 

The editor of the New Yorker suffered all that a man could suf- 
fer from this dread cause. In private letters he alludes, but only 
alludes, to his anguish at this period. " Through most of the time," 
he wrote years afterward, " I was very poor, and for four years re- 
ally bankrupt ; though always paying my notes and keeping my 
word, but living as poorly as possible." And again : " My embar- 
rassments were sometimes dreadful ; not that I feared destitution, 
but the fear of involving my friends in my misfortunes was very 
bitter." He came one afternoon into the house of a friend, and 
handing her a copy of his paper, said : "There, Mrs. S., that is the 
last number of the New Yorker you will ever see. I can secure 
my friends against loss if I stop now, and I Ml not risk their money 
by holding on any longer." He went over that evening to Mr. 
Gregory, to make known to him his determination ; but that con- 
stant and invincible friend would not listen to it. He insisted on 
his continuing the struggle, and offered his assistance with such 



PARK BENJAijIIN. HENRY J. RAYMOND. 139 

frank and earnest cordiality, that our hero's scruples were at 
length removed, and he came home elate, and resolved to battle 
another year with delinquent subscribers and a depreciated currency. 

During the early years of the New Yorker, Mr. Greeley had lit- 
tle regular assistance in editing the paper. In 1839, Mr. Park Ben- 
jamin contributed much to the interest of its columns by his lively 
and humorous critiques ; but his connection with the paper was not 
of long duration. It was long enough, however, to make him ac- 
quainted with the character of his associate. On retiring, in Octo- 
ber, 1839, he wrote : " Grateful to my feelings has been my inter- 
course with the readers of the New Yorker and with its principal 
editor and proprietor. By the former I hope my humble efforts 
will not be unreraembered ; by the latter I am happy to believe 
that the sincere friendship which I entertain for him is reciproca- 
ted. I still insist upon my editorial right so far as to say in oppo- 
sition to any veto which my coadjutor may interpose, that I can- 
not leave the association which has been so agreeable to me with- 
out paying to sterling worth, unbending integrity, high moral prin- 
ciple and ready kindness, their just due. These qualities exist in 
the character of the man with whom now 1 part ; and by all, to 
whom such qualities appear admirable, must such a character be 
esteemed. His talents, his industry, require no commendation from 
me ; the readers of this journal know them too well ; the public is 
sufficiently aware of the manner in which they have been exerted. 
What I have said has flowed from my heart, tributary rather to its 
own emotions than to the subject which has called them forth; 
his plain good name is his best eulogy." 

A few months later, Mr. Henry J. Raymond, a recent graduate 
of Burlington College, Vermont, came to the city to seek his for- 
tune. He had written some creditable sketches for the New 
Yorker, over the signature of "Fantorae," and on reaching the 
city called upon Horace Greeley. The result was that he entered 
the office as an assistant editor "till he could get so. lething bet- 
ter," and it may encourage some young, hard-working, un. =^cognized, 
ill-paid journahst, to know that the editor of tlie New York Dailj 
Times began his editorial career upon a salary of eight dollars a 
week. The said unrecognized, however, should further be informed, 
that Mr. Raymond is the hardest and swiftest wrrker connected 
with the New York Press. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE JEFFERSONIAN". 

Dbjects of the Jeffersonian — Its character — A novel Glorious- Victory paragriph — The 
Graves and Cilley duel — The Editor overworked. 

The slender income derived from the 'N'ew Yorker obliged its 
editor to engage in other labors. He wrote, as occasion offered, for 
various periodicals. The Daily Whig he supplied with its leading 
article for several months, and in 1838 undertook the entire edito- 
rial charge of the Jeffersonian, a weekly paper of the 'carai)aign' 
description, started at Albany on the third of March, and continu- 
ing in existence for one year. 

"With the conception and the establishment of the Jeffersonian, 
Horace Greeley had nothing to do. It was published under the 
auspices and by the direction of the Whig Central Committee of 
the State of New York, and the fund for its establishment was con- 
tributed by the leading politicians of the State in sums of ten dol- 
'iirs. " I never sought the post of its editor," wrote Mr. Greeley in 
1848, "but was sought for it by leading wliigs whom I had never 
before personally known." It was afforded at fifty cents a year, 
attained rapidly a circulation of fifteen thousand ; the editor, who 
^pent three days of each week in Albany, receiving for his year's 
services a thousand dollars. The ostensible object of the paper was 
— to quote the language of its projectors — "to furnish to every 
person within the State of New York a complete summary of politi- 
cal intelligence, at a rate which shall place it absolutely within the 
reach of every ti.an who will read it." But, according to the sub- 
sequent explanation of the Tribune, "it was established on the im- 
pulse of th whig tornado of 1837, to secure a like result in 1838, 
80 as to give the Whig party a Governor, Lieutenant Governor 
Senate, Assembly, U. S. Senator, Congressmen, and all the vast ex- 
ecutive patronage of the State, then amounting to millions of dol- 

140 



GLORIOUS VICTORY. 



141 



Che Jeffersonian was a good paper. It was published in a neat 
to form of eight pages. Its editorials, generally' few and brief, 
were written to convince, not to inflame, to enlighten, not to blind. 
It published a great many of the best speeches of the day, some 
for, some against, its own principles. Each number contained a full 
and well-compiled digest of political intelligence, and one page, or 
more, of general intelligence. It was not, in the slightest degree, 
like what is generally understood by a ' campaign paper.' Capital 
letters and po'nts of admiration were as little used as in the sedate 
and courteous columns of the Kew Yorker ; and there is scarcely 
anything to be found of the ' Glorious Victory ' sort except this : 

" Glorious Victory ! ' We have met the enemy, and they are ours !' Our 
whole ticket, with the exception of town clerk, one constable, three fence-view- 
ers, a pound-master and two hog-reeves elected ! There never was such a 
liumph !" 

Stop, my friend. Have you elected the best men to the several offices to be 
filled? Have you chosen men who have hitherto evinced not only capacity 
but integrity 7 — men whom you would trust implicity in every relation and 
business of life ? Above all, have you selected the very best person in the 
township for the important office of Justice of the Peace 7 If yea, we rejoice 
with you. If the men whose election will best subserve the cause of virtue 
and public order have been chosen, even your opponents will have little rea- 
son for regret. If it be otherwise, you have achieved but an empty and du- 
bious triumph. 

It would be gratifying to know what the Whig Central Commit- 
tee thought of such unexampled 'campaign ' language. In a word, 
the Jeffersonian was a better fifty cents' worth of thought and fact 
than had previously, or has since, been afforded, in the form of a 
weekly paper. 

The columns of the Jeffersonian afford little material for the pur- 
poses of this volume. There are scarcely any of those character- 
istic touches, those autobiographical allusions, that contribute so 
, much to the interest of other papers with which our hero has been 
connected. This is one, however : 

(Whosoever may have picked up the wallet of the editor of this 
paper — lost somewhere near State street, about the 20th ult,, shall 
receive half the contents, all round, by returning the balance to this 
Dflfice.) 



142 THE JEFFE^SONIAN. 

I will indulge the reader with one article entire from the Jeffer- 
sonian ; 1, because it is interesting ; 2, because it will serve to show 
the spirit and the manner of the editor in recording and comment- 
ing upon the topics of the day. He has since written more em- 
phatic, but not more effective articles, on similar subjects : 

THE TRAGEDY AT WASHINGTON. 

The whole country is shocked, and its moral sensibilities outraged, by the 
horrible tragedy lately perpetrated at Washington, of which a member of 
Congress was the victim. It was, indeed, an awful, yet we will hope not a 
profitless catastrophe ; and we blush for human nature when we observe the 
naost systematic efforts used to pervert to purposes of party advantage and 
personal malignity, a result which should be sacred to the interests of human- 
ity and morality — to the stern inculcation and enforcement of a reverence for 
the laws of the land and the mandates of God. 

Nearly a month since, a charge of corruption, or an ofifer to sell oflScial in- 
fluence and exertion for a pecuniary consideration, against some unnamed 
member of Congress, was transmitted to the New York Courier and Enquirer 
by its correspondent, ' the Spy in Washington.' Its appearance in that journal 
called forth a resolution from Mr. Wise, that the charge be investigated by 
the House. On this an irregular and excited debate arose, which consumed a 
day or two, and which was signalized by severe attacks on the Public Press 
of this country, and on the letter-writers from Washington. In particular 
the Courier and Enquirer, in which this charge appeared, its chief Editor, ' 
its correspondent the Spy, were stigmatized ; and Mr. Cilley, a member from 
Maine, was among those who gave currency to the charges. Col. Webb, the 
Editor, on the appearance of these charges, instantly proceeded to Washington, 
and there addressed a note t.o Mr. Cilley on the subject. That note, it ap- 
pears, was courteous and dignified in its language, merely inquiring of Mr. 
C. if his remarks, published in the Globe, were intended to convey any per- 
sonal disrespect to the writer, and containing no menace of any kind. It was 
handed to Mr. Cilley by Mr. Graves, a member from Kentucky, but declmed 
by Mr. C, on the ground, as was understood, that he did not choose to be 
drawn into controversy with Editors of public journals in regard to his remarks 
in the House. This was correct and honorable ground. The Constitution 
expressly provides that members of Congress shall not be responsible else- 
where for words spoken in debate, and the provision is a most noble and 
necessary one. 

But Mr. Graves considered the reply as placing him in an equivocal posi- 
tion. If a note transmitted through his hands had been declined, as was 
liable to be understood, because the writer was not Avorthy the treatment of 
a gentleman, the dishonor was reflected on himaelf as the bearer of a dissrrace- 



THE GRAVES AND CILLEY DUEL. 143 

ful message. Mr. Graves, therefore, wrote a note to Mr. C, asking h>m if 
he were correct in his understanding that the letter in question was declined 
because Mr. C. could not consent to hold himself accountable to public jour- 
nalists for words spoken in debate, and not on grounds of personal objection 
to Col. Webb as a gentleman. To this note Mr. Cilley replied, on the ad- 
visement of his friends, that he declined the note of Col. Webb, because he 
"chose to be drawn into no controversy with him,^' and added that he 
" neither af&rmed nor denied anything in regard to his character." This waa 
considered by Mr. Graves as involving him fully in the dilemma which he 
was seeking to avoid, and amounting to an impeachment of his veracity, and 
he now addressed another note to inquire, " whether you declined to receive his 
(Col. Webb's) communication on the ground of any personal objection to him 
as a gentleman of honor ?" To this query Mr. Cilley declined to give an 
answer, denying the right of Mr. G. to propose it. The next letter in course 
was a challenge from Mr. Graves by the hand of Mr. Wise, promptly respond- 
ed to by Mr. Cilley through Gen. Jones of Wisconsin. 

The weapons selected by Mr. Cilley were rifles ; the distance eighty yards. 
(It was said that Mr. Cilley was practicing with the selected weapon the 
morning of accepting the challenge, and that he lodged eleven balls in suc- 
cession in a space of four inches square.) Mr. Graves experienced some diffi- 
culty in procuring a rifle, and asked time, which was granted ; and Gen. 
Jones, Mr. Cilley's second, tendered him the use of his own rifle ; but, mean- 
time, Mr. Graves had procured one. 

The challenge was delivered at 12 o'clock on Friday ; the hour selected by 
Mr. Cilley was 12 of the following day. His unexpected choice of rifles, how- 
ever, and Mr. Graves' inability to procure one, delayed the meeting till 2 
o'clock. 

The first fire was ineffectual. Mr. Wise, as second of the challenging party, 
now called all parties together, to effect a reconciliation. Mr. C. declining to 
negotiate while under challenge, it was suspended to give room for explana- 
tion. Mr. Wise remarked — " Mr. Jones, these gentlemen have come here 
without animosity towards each other ; they are fighting merely upon a point 
of honor ; cannot Mr. Cilley assign some reason for not receiving at Mr. 
Graves' hands Colonel Webb's communication, or make some disclaimer which 
will relieve Mr. Graves from his position ?" The reply was — " I am author- 
ized by my friend, Mr. Cilley, to say that in declining to receive the note from 
Mr. Graves, purporting to be from Colonel Webb, he meant no disrespect to 
Mr. Graves, because he entertained for him then, as he now does, the highest 
respect and the most kind feelings ; but that he declined to receive the note 
because ha chose not to be drawn into any controversy with Colonel Webb.' 
This is Mr. Jones' version ; Mr. Wise thinks he said, " My friend refuses to 
disclaim disrespect to Colonel Webb, because he does not choose to be drawn 
into an expression of opinion as to him." After consultation, Mr Wise re- 



144 THE JEFFHRSONIAN. 

turned to Mr. Jones aad said, " Mr. Jones, this answer leaves Mr Graves pre 
cisely in the position in which he stood when the challenge was sent." 

Another exchange of shots was now had to no purpose, and another attempt 
at reconciliation was likewise unsuccessful. The seconds appear to have been 
mutually and anxiously desirous that the affair should here terminate, but no 
arrangement could be effected. Mr. Graves insisted that his antagonist should 
place his refusal to receive the message of which he was the bearer on some 
grounds which did not imply such an opinion of the writer as must reflect dis- 
grace on the bearer. He endeavored to have the refusal placed on the ground 
that Mr. C. " did not hold himself accountable to Colonel Webb for words 
spoken in debate." This was declined by Mr. Cilley, and the duel proceeded. 

The official statement, drawn up by the two seconds, would seem to import 
that but three shots were exchanged ; but other accounts state positively that 
Mr. Cilley fell at the fourth fire. He was shot through the body, and died in 
two minutes. On seeing that he had fallen, badly wounded, Mr. Graves ex- 
pressed a wish to see him, and was answered by Mr. Jones — " My friend is 
dead, sir !" 

Colonel Webb first heard of the difficulty which had arisen on Friday even- 
ing, but was given to understand that the meeting would not take place for 
several days. On the following morning, however, he had reason to suspect 
the truth. He immediately armed himself, and with two friends proceeded to 
Mr. Cilley's lodgings, intending to force the latter to meet him before he did 
Mr. Graves. He did not find him, however, and immediately proceeded to the 
old dueling ground at Bladensburgh, and thence to several other places, to 
interpose himself as the rightful antagonist of Mr. Cilley. Had he found the 
parties, a more dreadful tragedy still would doubtless have ensued. But the 
place of meeting had been changed, and the arrangements so secretly made, 
that though Mr. Clay and many others were on the alert to prevent it, the 
duel was not interrupted. 

" We believe we have here stated every material fact in relation to this 
melancholy business. It is suggested, however, that Mr. Cilley was less dis- 
posed to concede anything from the first in consideration of his own course 
when a difficulty recently arose between two of his colleagues, Messrs. Jarvis 
and Smith, which elicited a challenge from the former, promptly and nobly 
declined by the latter. This refusal, it is said, was loudly and vehemently 
stigmatized as cowardly by Mr. Cilley. This circumstance does not come to 
as well authenticated, but it is spoken of as notorious at Washington. 

" But enough of detail and circumstance. The reader who has not seen the 
official statement will find its substance in the foregoing. He can lay the 
blame where he chooses. We blame only the accursed spirit of False Honor 
which required this bloody sacrifice — the horrid custom of Dueling which ex- 
acts and palliates this atrocity. It appears evident that Mr. Cilley's course 
must have been based on the determination that Col. Webb was no' entitled 



THE EDITOR OVERWORKED. 145 

lo be regarded as a gentleman ; and if so, there was hardly an escape from 
a bloody conclusion after Mr. Graves had once consented, however uncon- 
sciously, to bear the note of Col. Webb. Each of the parties, doubtless, acted 
as he considered due to his own character; each was right in the view of the 
duelist's code of honor, but fearfully wrong in the eye of reason, of morality, 
of humanity, and the imperative laws of man and of God. Of the principals, 
one sleeps cold and stiff beneath the icy pall of winter and the clods of the 
valley ; the other — far more to be pitied — lives to execrate through years of 
anguish and remorse the hour when he was impelled to imbrue his hands in 
the blood of a fellow-being. 

Mr. Graves we know personally, and a milder and more amiable gentleman 
is rarely to be met with. He has for the last two years been a Representative 
from the Louisville District, Kentucky, and is universally esteemed and be- 
loved. Mr. Cilley was a young man of one of the best families in New Hamp- 
shire ; his grandfather was a Colonel and afterwards a General of the Revo 
lution. His brother was a Captain in the last War with Great Britain, and 
leader of the desperate bayonet charge at Bridgewater. Mr. Cilley himself, 
though quite a young man, has been for two years Speaker of the House of 
Representatives of Maine, and was last year elected to Congress from the 
Lincoln District, which is decidedly opposed to him in politics, and which 
recently gave 1,200 majority for the other side. Young as he was, he had ac- 
quired a wide popularity and influence in his own State, and was laying the 
foundations of a brilliant career in the National Councils. And this man, with 
80 many ties to bind him to life, with the sky of his future bright with hope, 
without an enemy on earth, and with a wife and three children of tender age 
whom his death must drive to the verge of madness — has perished miserably 
in a combat forbidden by God, growing out of a difference so pitiful in itself, 
80 direful in its consequences. 
Could we add anything to render the moral more terribly impressive ? 

The year of the Jeffersonian was a most laborious and harassing 
>ue. No one but a Greeley would or could have endured such con- 
tinuous and distracting toils. He had two papers to provide for ; 
papers diverse in character, papers published a hundred and fifty 
miles apart, papers to which expectant thousands looked for theii 
weekly supply of mental pabulum. As soon as the agony of getting 
the New Yorker to press was over, and copy for the outside of the 
next number given out, away rushed the editor to the Albany boat ; 
and after a night of battle with the bed-bugs of the cabin, or the 
politicians of the hurricane-deck, he hurried off to new duties at the 
office of the Jeffersonian. The Albany boat of 1838 was a very 
different style of conveyance from the Albany boat of the present 
10 



146 THE LOG C^BIN. 

year of our liOrd. It was, in fact, not much more than six times as 
elegant and comfortable as the steamers that, at this hour, ply in 
the seas and channels of Europe. The sufferings of our hero may 
be imagined. 

But, not his labors. They can be understood only by those who 
know, by blessed experience, what it is to get up, or try to get up, 
a good, correct, timely, and entertaining weekly paper. The sub- 
ject of editorial labor, however, must be reserved for a future page. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE LOG-CABIN-. 

"TIPPECANOE AND TYLER TOO." 

Wire-pulling— The delirium of 1840— The Log-Cabin— Unprecedeuted hit— A glance at 
its pages — Log-Cabin jokes — Log-Cabiu songs— Horace Greeley and the cake-bas- 
ket— Pecuniary difBcultles continue— The Tribune announced. 

"WiEK-PULLiNG is a sncakiug, bad, demoralizing business, and the 
people hate it. The campaign of 1840, which resulted in the elec- 
tion of General Harrison to the presidency, was, at bottom, the 
revolt of the people of the United States against the wire-pulling 
principle, supposed to be incarnate in the person of Martin Van 
Buren. Other elements entered into the delirium of those mad 
months. The country was only recovering, and that slowly, from 
the disasters of 1836 and 1837, and the times were still 'hard.' 
But the fire and fury of the struggle arose from the fact, that Gen- 
eral Harrison, a man who had done something, was pitted against 
Martin Van Buren, a man who had pulled wires. The hero of Tip- 
pecanoe and the farmer of North Bend, against the wily diplomatist 
who partook of sustenance by the aid of gold spoons. The Log- 
Cabin against the White House. 

Great have been the triumphs of wire-pulling in this and other 
countries; and yet it is an unsafe thing to engage in. As bluff 
King Hal melted away, with one fiery glance, all the greatness of 



UNPRECEDENTED HIT. 147 

Wolsey ; as the elephant, with a tap of his trunk, knockg the breath 
out of the Httle tyrant whom he had been long accustomed implicitly 
to obey, — so do the People, in some quite unexpected moment, blow 
away, with one breath, the elaborate and deep-laid schemes of the 
rejiublican wire-puller; and Mm! They have done it, O wire-pul- 
ler ! and will do it again. 

Who can have forgotten that campaign of 1840? The 'mass 
meetings,' the log-cabin raisings, the 'hard cider' drinking, the song 
singing, the Tippecanoe clubs, the caricatures, the epigrams, the 
jokes, the universal excitement ! General Harrison was sung into 
•■he presidential chair. Van Buren was laughed out of it. Every 
town had its log-cabin, its club, and its chorus. Tippecanoe song- 
books were sold by the hundred thousand. There were Tippecanoe 
medals, Tippecanoe badges, Tippecanoe flags, Tippecanoe handker- 
chiefs, Tippecanoe almanacs, and Tippecanoe shaving-soap. All 
otjier interests were swallowed up in tbe one interest of the elec- 
tion. All noises were drowned in the cry of Tippecanoe and Tylur 
too. 

The man who contributed most to keep alive and increase the 
popular enthusiasm, the man who did most to feed that enthusiasm 
with the substantial fuel of fact and argument, was, beyond all ques- 
tion, Horace Greeley. 

On the second of May, the first number of the Log-Cabin ap- 
peared, by ' H. Greeley & Co.,' a weekly paper, to be published 
simultaneously at New York and Albany, at fifty cents for the cam- 
paign of six months. It was a small paper, about half the size of 
the present Tribune ; but it was conducted with wonderful spirit, 
and made an unprecedented hit. Of the first number, an edition of 
twenty thousand was printed, which Mr. Greeley's friends thought a far 
greater number than would be sold ; but the edition vanished from the 
counter in a day. Eight thousand more were struck off ; they were 
sold in a morning. Four thousand more were printed, and still the 
demand seemed unabated, A further supply of six thousand was 
printed, and the types were then distributed. In a few days, how- 
ever, the demand became so urgent, that the number was re-set, and 
an edition of ten thousand struck off. Altogether, forty-eight thou- 
sand of the first number were sold. Subscribers came pouring in 
at the rate of seven hundred a day. The list lenafcliened in a few 



148 THE LOG CABIN. 

weeks to sixty thousand names, and kept increasing till the weekly 
issue was between eighty and ninety thousand. ' H. Greeley and 
Co.' were really overwhelmed with their success. They had made 
no preparations for such an enormous increase of business, and they 
were troubled to hire clerks and folders fast enough to get their 
Btupendous edition into the mails. 

The Log Cabin is not dull reading, even now, after the lapse of 
fifteen years ; and though the men and the questions of that day 
are, most of them, dead. But then^ it was devoured with an eager- 
ness, which even those who remember it can hardly realize. Let 
us glance hastily over its pages. 

The editor explained the ' objects and scope' of the little paper, 
thus : — 

" The Log Cabin will be a zealous and unwavering advocate of 
the rights, interests and prosperity of our whole country, but es- 
pecially those of the hardy subduers and cultivators of her soil. It 
will be the advocate of the cause of the Log Cabin against that of 
the Custom House and Presidential Palace. It will be an advocate 
of the interests of unassuming industry against the schemes and 
devices of functionaries ' drest in a little brief authority,' whose 
salaries are trebled in value whenever Labor is forced to beg for em- 
ployment at three or four shillings a day. It will be the advocate of 
a sound, uniform, adequate Currency for our whole country, against 
the visionary projects and ruinous experiments of the oflBcial Dous- 
terswivels of the day, who commenced by promising Prosperity, 
Abundance, and Plenty of Gold as the sure result of their policy; 
and lo! we have its issues in disorganization, bankruptcy, low 
wages and treasury rags. In fine, it will be the advocate of Free- 
dom, Improvement, and of National Reform, by- the election of 
Harrison and Tyler, the restoration of purity to the government, of 
efficiency to the public will, and of Better Times to the People. 
Such are the objects and scope of the Log Cabin." 

The contents of the Log Cabin were of various kinds. The first 
page was devoted to Literature of an exclusively Tippecanoe charac- 
ter, such as " Sketch of Gen. Harrison," " Anecdote of Gen. Har 
rison," " General Harrison's Creed," " Slanders on Gen. Harrison re 
futed," "Meeting of the Old Soldiers," &c. The first number had 
twenty-eight articles and paragraphs of this description. The sec- 



A GLANCE AT ITS PAGES. 149 

ond page contained editorials and correspondence. The third was 
where the " Splendid Victories," and " Unprecedented Triumphs," 
were recorded. The fourth page contained a Tippec-anoe song with 
music, and a few articles of a miscellaneous character. Dr. Chan- 
ning's lectuie upon the Elevation of the Laboring Classes ran 
through several of the early numbers. Most of the numbers con- 
tain an engraving or two, plans of General Harrison's battles, por- 
traits of the candidates, or a caricature. One of the caricatures 
represented Van Buren caught in a trap, and over the picture was 
the following explanation: — "The New Era has prepared and 
pictured a Log Cabin Trap, representing a Log Cabin — set as a 
figure-4-trap, and baited with a barrel of hard cider. By the follow- 
ing it will be seen that the trap has been speunq, and a sly nibbler 
from Kinderhook is looking out through the gratings. Old Hickory 
is intent on prying him out; but it is manifestly no go." The 
editorials of the Log Cabin were mostly of a serious and argument- 
ative cast, upon the Tariff, the Currency, and the Hard Times. 
They were able and timely. The spirit of the campaign, however, 
is contained in the other departments of the paper, from which a 
few brief extracts may amuse the reader for a moment, as well as 
illustrate the feeling of the time. 

The Log Cabins that were built all over the country, were 
* raised ' and inaugurated with a great show of rejoicing. In one 
number of the paper, there are accounts of as many as six of these 
hilarious ceremonials, with their speechifyings and hard-cider drink- 
ings. The humorous paragraph annexed appears in an early num- 
ber, under the title of " Thrilling Log Cabin Incident :" — 

" The whigs of Erie, Pa., raised a Log Cabin last week from which the ban- 
ner of Harrison and Reform was displayed. While engaged in the dedica- 
tion of their Cabin, the whigs received information which led them to appre- 
hend a hostile demonstration from Harbor Creek, a portion of the borough 
whose citizens had ever been strong Jackson and Van Buren men. Soon after- 
wards a party )f horsemen, about forty ^in number, dressed in Indian costume, 
armed with tc mahawks and scalping knives, approached the Cabin ! The 
whigs made prompt preparations to defend their banner. The scene became in- 
tensely exciting. The assailants rode up to the Cabin, dismounted, and surren- 
dered themselves up as voluntary prisoners of war. On inquiry, they proved tc 
be stanch Jackson men from Harbor Creek, who had taken that a ode of array- 



150 THE LOG CfABIN. 

ing themselves under the Harrison Banner ! The tomahawk was then bur 
led ; after which the string of the latch was pushed out, and the Harbor-Creek 
ers were ushered into the Cabin, where they pledged their support to Harri- 
son in a bumper of good old hard cider." 

The great joker of that election, as of every other since, was Mr. 
Prentice, of the Louisville Journal, the wittiest of editors, living or 
dead. Many of his good things appear in the Log Cabin, but most 
of them allude to men and events that have been forgotten, and the 
point of the joke is lost. The following are three of the Log Cab- 
in jokes ; they sparkled in 1840, flat as they may seem now : — 

" The Globe says that ' there are but two parties in the country, the poor 
man's party and the rich man's party,' and that ' Mr. Van Puren is the friend 
of the former.' The President is certainly in favor of strengthening the poor 
man's party, numerically I He goes for impoverishing the whole country — 
except the office-holders." 

" What do the locofocos expect by vilifying the Log Cabin 1 Do they not 
know that a Log Cabin is all the better for being daubed with mud ?" 

" A whig passing through the streets of Boston a few mornings ago, espied 
a custom-house officer gazing ruefully at a bulletin displaying the latest news 

of the Maine election. ' Ah ! Mr. , taking your bitters this morning, 

I see.' The way the loco scratched gravel was a pattern for sub-treasurers." 

One specimen paragraph from the department of political news 
will suffice to show the frenzy of those who wrote for it. A letter- 
writer at Utica, describing a ' mass meeting ' in that city, bursts up- 
on his readers in this style : 

" This has been the proudest, brightest day of my life ! Never — no, never, 
have I before seen the people in their majesty! Never were the foundations 
of popular sentiment so broken up ! The scene from early dawn to sunset, 
has been one of continued, increasing, bewildering enthusiasm. The hearts of 
TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND FREEMEN havc been Overflowing with gratitude, and 
gladness, and joy. It has been a day of jubilee — an era of deliverance 
FOR Central New York ! The people in waves have poured in from the val- 
leys and rushed down from the mountains. The city has been vocal with elo- 
quence, with musi(5, and with acclamations. Demonstrations of strength, and em 
blems of victory, and harbingers of prosperity are all around us, cheering and 
animating, and assuring a people who are finally and effectually aroused. I wiU 
not now attempt to describe the procession of the people. Suffice it to say that 



LOG CABIN SONGS. 151 

there was an ocean of them ! The procession was over fi\ e miles long. * 
* * Governor Seward and Lieut. Gov. Bradish were unanimously nomina- 
ted by resolution for re-election. The result was communicated to the people 
aspembled in Mass in Chancery Square, whose response to the nomination was 
epontancous, loud, deep and resounding.'* 

The profusion of the presidential maosion was one of the stand- 
ing topics of those who wished to eject its occupant. In one num- 
ber of the Log-Cabin is a speech, delivered in the House of Repre- 
sentatives by a member of the opposition, in which the bills of the 
persons who supplied the White House are given at length. Take 
these specimens : 

34 table knives ground, $1,37^ 

2 new knife blades, . 75 

2 cook's knife blades, 2,50 

4,62^ 

2 dozen brooms, . i3,75 

1-2 do. hard scrubs, '2,37 

1-2 do. brooms, _ 1>38 

6,50 

2 tin buckets, .' «2,00 

Milk strainer and skimmer, 92^ 

Chamber bucket, 2,00 

2 dozen tart pans, 2,50 



This seems like putting an extremely fine point upon a political ar 
gument, "What the orator wished to show, however, was, that such 
articles as the above ought to be paid for out of the presidential 
salary, not the public treasury. The speech exhibited some columns 
of these ' house-bills.' It made a great sensation, and was enough 
to cure any decent man of a desire to become a serrant of the 
people. 

But, as I have observed, Gen. Harrison was sung into the presi- 
dential chair. The Log Cabin preserves a large number of the politi- 
cal ditties of the time ; the editor himself contributing two. A very 
few stanzas will suffice to show the quality of the Tippecanoe poetry 
The following is one from the ' Wolverine's Song' •• 



152 THE LOG CABIN. 

We know that Van Buren can ride in his coach, 
With servants, forbidding the Vulgar's approach — 
We know that his fortune such things will allow, 
And we know that our candidate follows the plough ; 
But what if he does 1 Who was bolder to fight 
In his country's defense on that perilous night, 
When naught save his valor sufficed to subdue 
Our foes at the battle of Tippecanoe 1 

Hurrah for Tippecanoe ! 
He dropped the red Locos at Tippecanoe ! 

From the song of the 'Buckeye Cabin,' these are two stanzas: 

Oh ! where, tell me where, was your Buckeye Cabin made? 
Oh ! where, tell me where, was your Buckeye Cabin made 7 
'Twas made among the merry boys that wield the plough and spade 
Where the Log Cabins stand in the bonnie Buckeye shade. 

Oh ! what, tell me what, is to be your Cabin's fate 1 
Oh! what, tell me what, is to be your Cabin's fate 7 
We '11 wheel it to the Capitol and place it there elate, 
For a token and a sign of the bonnie Buckeye State. 

The ' Turn Out Song ' was very popular, and easy to sing ; 

From the White House, now Matty, turn out, turn out. 
From the White House, now Matty, turn out ! 

Since there you have been 

No peace we have seen, 
So Matty, now please to turn out, turn out, 
So Matty, now please to turn out ! 

Make way for old Tip ! turn out, turn out ! 
Make way for old Tip, turn out ! 
'Tis the people's decree, 
Their choice he shall be, 
So, Martin Van Buren, turn out, turn out^ 
So, Martin Van Buren, turn out ! 

But of all the songs ever sung, the most absurd and the most teU* 
Ing, was that which began thus 



LOG CABIN SONGS. 153 

What has cau.*ed this great commotion-motion-motion 
Our country through 1 
It is the ball a-rolling on 
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, 
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too ; 
And with them we '11 beat little Van ; 
Van, Van, Van is a used-up man, 
And with them wo '11 beat little Van. 

This song had two advan .ages. The tune — half chant, half 
jig — wa,s adapted to bring out all the absurdities of the words, and, 
in particular, those of the last two lines. The second advantage 
was, that stanzas could be multiplied to any extent, on the spot, to 
suit the exigences of any occasion. For example : 

" The beautiful girls, God bless their souls, souls, souls, 
The country through. 
Will all, to a man, do all they can 
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too ; 
And with them," etc., etc. 

During that summer, ladies attended the mass meetings in thou- 
sands, and in their honor the lines just quoted were frequently sung. 

These few extracts from the Log Cabin show the nature of the 
element in which our editor was called upon to work in the hot 
months of 1840. His own interest in the questions at issue was in- 
tense, and his labors were incessant and most arduous. He wrote 
articles, he made speeches, he sat on committees, he traveled, 
he gave advice, he suggested plans; while he had two news- 
papers on his hands, and a load of debt upon his shoulders. His 
was a willing servitude. From the days of his apprenticeship he 
had observed the course of ' Democratic' administrations with dis- 
gust and utter disapproval, and he had borne his full share of the 
consequences of their bad measures. His whole soul was in this 
contest. He fought fairly too. His answer to a correspondent, that 
'articles assailing the personal character of Mr. Van Buren or any 
of his supporters cannot be published in the Cabin,' was in advance 
of the politics of 1840. 

One scene, if it could be portrayed on the printed page as visibly 
as it exists in the mi^mories of those who witnessed it, would show 



154 THE LOO* CABIN. 

better than declaratory words, how absorbed Mr. Greeley was in 
politics during this famous 'campaign.' It is a funny story, and 
literally true. 

Time, — Sunday evening. Scene, — the parlor of a friend's house. 
Company, — numerous and political, except the ladies, who are 
gracious and hospitable. Mr. Greeley is expected to tea, but does 
not come, and the meai is transacted without him. Tea over, he 
arrives, and plunges headlong into a conversation on the currency. 
The lady of the house thinks he ' had better take some tea,' but 
cannot get a hearing on the subject ; is distressed, puts the question 
at length, and has her invitation hurriedly declined ; brushed aside, 
in fact, with a wave of the hand. 

" Take a cruller, any way," said she, handing him a cake-basket 
containing a dozen or so of those unspeakable, Dutch indigestibles. 

The expounder of the currency, dimly conscious that a large ob- 
ject was approaching him, puts forth his hands, still vehemently 
talking, and takes, not a cruller, but the cake-basket, and deposits 
it in his lap. The company are inwardly convulsed, and some of 
the weaker members retire to the adjoining apartment, the ex- 
pounder continuing his harangue, unconscious of their emotions or 
its cause. Minutes elapse. His hands, in their wandering through 
the air, come in contact with the topmost cake, which they take 
and break. He begins to eat ; and eats and talks, talks and eats, 
till lie has finished a cruller. Then he feels for another, and eats 
that, and goes on, slowly consuming the contents of the basket, till 
the last crum is gone. The company look on amazed, and the kind 
lady of the house fears for the consequences. She had heard that 
cheese is an antidote to indigestion. Taking the empty cake- 
basket from his lap, she silently puts a plate of cheese in its place, 
hoping that instinct will guide his hand aright. The experiment 
succeeds. Gradually, the blocks of white new cheese disappear. 
She removes the plate. No ill consequences follow. Those who 
saw this sight are fixed in the belief, that Mr. Greeley was not 
then, nor has since become, aware, that on that evening he par- 
took of sustenance. 

The reader, perhaps, has concluded that the prodigious sale of 
the Log Cabin did something to relieve our hero from his pecuniary 
embarrassments. Such was aot the fact He paid some debts 



THE CAKE-BASKET. 155 

•jut he incurred others, and was not, for any week, free from 
anxiety. The price of the paper was low, ani its unlooked-for sale 
involved the proprietors in expenses which might have been avoid- 
ed, or much lessened, if they had been prepared for it. The mail- 
ing of single numbers cost a hundred dollars. The last number of 
the campaign series, the great " O K" number, the number that 
was all staring with majorities, and capital letters, and points of 
admiration, the number that announced the certain triumph of the 
Whigs, and carried joy into a thousand Log Cabins, contained a 
most moving "Appeal" to the "Friends who owe us." It was in 
small type, and in a corner remote from the victorious columns. It 
ran thus : — " We were induced in a few instances to depart from 
our general rule, and forward the first series of the Log Cabin 
on credit — having in almost every instance a promise, that the 
money should be sent us before the first of November. That 
time has passed, and we regret to say, that many of those prom- 
ises have not been fulfilled. To those who owe us, therefore, we 
are compelled to say. Friends ! we need our money — our paper- 
maker needs it! and has a right to ask us for it. The low price 
at which we have published it, forbids the idea of gain from this 
paper : we only ask the means of paying what we owe. Once for 
all, we implore you to do us justice, and enable us to do the 
same." This tells the whole story. Not a word need be added. 

The Log Cabin was designed only for the campaign, and it was 
expected to expire with the twenty-seventh number. The zealous 
editor, however, desirous of presenting the complete returns of the 
victory, issued an extra number, and sent it gratuitously to all his 
subscribers. This number announced, also, that the Log Cabin 
would be resumed in a few weeks. On the fifth of December the 
new series began, as a family political paper, and continued, with 
moderate success, till both it and. the New Yorker were merged in 
the Tribune. 

For his services in the campaign — and no man contributed as 
much to its success as he— Horace Greeley accepted no office ; 
nor did he even witness the inaugur .tion. This is not strange. 
But it is somewhat surprising that the incoming administration had 
not the decency to offer him something. Mr. Fry (W. H.) made a 
speech one evening at a political meeting in Philadelphia. Th« 



156 THE LOG CABIN. 

next morning, a committee waited upon him to k low 1 jr what of- 
fice he intended to become an applicant. " Office ?" said the aston« 
ished composer — " No office." " Why, then," said the committee, 
" what the h — II did you spealc last night for V Mr. Greeley had 
not even the honor of a visit from a committee of this kind. 

The Log Cabin, however, gave him an immense reputation in all 
parts of the country, as an able writer and a zealous politician — a 
reputation which soon became more valuable to him than pecuniary 
capital. The Log Cabin of April 3d contained the intelligence of 
General Harrison's death ; and, among a few others, the following 
advertisement : 

"new toek tribune. 

" On Saturday, the tenth day of April instant, the Subscriber will publish 
the first number of a New Morning Journal of Politics, Literature, and Gen- 
eral Intelligence. 

" The Tribune, as its name imports, will labor to advance the interests of 
the People, and to promote their Moral, Socia\ and Political well-being. The 
immoral and degrading Police Reports, Advertisements a'hd other matter which 
have been allowed to disgrace the columns of our leading Penny Papers, will 
be carefully excluded from this, and no exertion spared to render it worthy of 
the hearty approval of the virtuous and refined, and a welcome visitant at the 
family fireside. 

" Earnestly believing that the political revolution which has called William 
Henry Harrison to the Chief Magistracy of the Nation was a triumph of 
Right Reason and Public Good over Error and Sinister Ambition, the Tribune 
will give to the New Administration a frank and cordial, but manly and inde 
pendent support, judging it always by its acts, and commending those onlj 
so far as they shall seem calculated to subserve the great end of all govern 
ment — the welfare of the People. 

" The Tribune will be published every morning on a fair royal sheet — (size 
of the Log-Cabin and Evening Signal) — and transmitted to its city subscribers 
at the low price of one cent per copy. Mail subscribers, $4 per annum. It 
will contain the news by the morning's Southern Mail, which is contained in no 
otl^er Penny Paper. Subscriptions are respectfully solicited by 

HoRACB Gbeeley, 30 Ann St. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

STAETS THE TEIBUNE. 

rhe Capital— The Daily Press of New York in 1841— The Tribune appears— The Omem 
unpropitious— The first week— Conspiracy to put down the Tribune— The Tribune 
triumphs— Thomas McElrath— The Tribune alive— Industry of the Editors- Their 
independence— Horace Greeley and John Tyler— The Tribune a Fixed Fact. 

Who furnished the capital? Horace Greeley. But he wa> 
scarcely solvent on the day of the Tribune's appearance. True,- 
and yet it is no less the fact that nearly all the large capital required 
for the enterprise was supplied by him. 

A large capital vs indispensable for the establishment of a good 
daily paper ; but it need not be a capital of money. It may be a 
capital of reputation, credit, experience, talent, opportunity. Horace 
Greeley was trusted and admired by his party, and by many of the 
party to which he was opposed. In his own circle, he was known 
to be a man of incorruptible integrity — one who would pay his 
debts at any and at every sacrifice — one who was quite incapable of 
contracting an obligation which he was not confident of being able 
to discharge. In other words, his credit was good. He had talent 
and experience. Add to these a thousand dollars lent him by a 
friend, (James Ooggeshall,) and the evident need there was of just 
such a paper as the Tribune proved to be, and we have the capital 
upon which the Tribune started. All told, it was equivalent to a 
round fifty thousand dollars. 

In the present year, 1855, there are two hundred and three peri- 
odicals published in the city of New York, of which twelve are 
daily papers. In the year 1841, the number of periodicals was one 
hundred, and the number of daily papers twelve. The Courier and 
Enquirer, New York American, Express, and Commercial Adver- 
tiser were Whig papers, at ten dollars a year. The Evening Post 
and Journal of Commerce, at the same price, leaned to the ' Demo- 
cratic' side of politics, the former avowedly, tJhe latter not. Tli^ 

15/ 



158 STARTS THE TRIBUNE. 

Signal, Tatler, and Star were cheap papers, the first two neutral, the 
latter dubious. The Herald, at two cents, was — the Herald ! The 
Sun, a penny paper of immense circulation, was afiectedly neutral, 
really 'Democratic,' and very objectionable for the gross character 
of many of its advertisements. A cheap paper, of the Whig school 
of politics, did not exist. On the 10th of April, 1841, the Tribune 
appeared— a paper one-third the size of the present Tribune, price 
one cent; office No. 30 Ann-street; Horace Greeley, editor and 
proprietor, assisted in the department of literary criticism, the fine 
arts, and general intelligence, by H. J. Kaymond. Under its head- 
ing, the new paper bore, as a motto, the dying words of Harrison: 

'' I DESIRE YOU TO FNDEESTAXD THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF THE GOVERN- 
MENT. I WISH THEM CARRIED OUT. I ASK NOTHING MORE." 

The omens were not propitious. The appallingly sudden death 
of General Harrison, the President of so many hopes, the first of 
the Presidents who had died in office, had cast a gloom over the 
whole country, and a prophetic doubt over the prospects of the 
Whig party. 

The editor watched the preparation of his first number all night, 
nervous and anxious, withdrawing this article and altering that, and 
Dever leaving the form till he saw it, complete and safe, upon the 
tvress. The morning dawned sullenly upon the town. " The sleety 
atmosphere," wrote Mr. Greeley, long after, " the leaden sky, the 
unseasonable wintriness, the general gloom of that stormy day, 
which witnessed the grand though mournful pageant whereby our 
city commemorated the blighting of a nation's hopes in the most 
untimely death of President Harrison, were not inaptly miniatured 
in his own prospects and fortunes. Having devoted the seven pre- 
ceding years almost wholly to the establishment of a weekly com- 
pend of literature and intelligence, (The New Yorker,) wherefrom, 
though widely circulated and warmly praised, he had received no 
other return than the experience and wider acquaintance thence 
accruing, he entered upon his novel and most precarious enterprise, 
most slenderly provided with the external means of commanding 
subsistence and success in its prosecution. With no partner or busi- 
ness associate, with inconsiderable pecuniary resources, and only a 
promise from political friends of aid to the extent of two thousand 
dollars, of which but one half was ever reahzed, (and that long 



THE TRIBUNE APPEARS. 159 

since repaid, but the sense of obligation to the far from \vealthy 
friend who made the loan is none the less fresh and ardent,) he un- 
dertook the enterprise — at all times and under any circumstances 
hazardous — of adding one more to the already amply extensive list 
of daily newspapers issued in this emporium, where the current 
expenses of such papers, already appalling, were soon to be doubled 
by rivalry, by stimulated competition, by the progress of business, 
the complication of interests, and especially by the general diffusion 
of the electric telegraph, and where at least nineteen out of every 
twenty attempts to establish a new daily have proved disastrous 
failures. Manifestly, the prospects of success in this case were far 
from flattering," 

The Tribune began with about six hundred subscribers, procured 
by the exertions of a few of the editor's personal and political 
friends. Five thousand copies of the first number were printed, and 
" we found some diflaculty in giving them away," says Mr. Greeley 
in the article just quoted. The expenses of the first week were 
five hundred and twenty-five dollars ; the receipts, ninety-two dol- 
lars. A sorry prospect for an editor whose whole cash capital was 
a thousand dollars, and that borrowed. 

But the Tribune was a live paper. Fight was the word with it 
from the start ; Fight has been the word ever since ; Fight is the 
word this day ! If it had been let alone, it would not have died ; its 
superiority both in quantity and the quality of its matter to any other 
of the cheap papers would have prevented that catastrophe ; but its 
progress was amazingly accelerated in the first days of its existence 
by the efforts of an enemy to put it down. That enemy was the 
Sun. 

" The publisher of the Sun," wrote Park Benjamin in the Even- 
ing Signal, " has, during the last few days, got up a conspiracy to 
crush the New York Tribune. The Tribune was, from its incep- 
tion, very successful, and, in many instances, persons in the habit of 
taking the Sun, stopped that paper — wisely preferring a sheet which 
gives twice the amount of reading matter, and always contains 
the latest intelligence. This fact afforded suflicient evidence to 
Beach, as it did to all others who were cognizant of the circjra- 
stances, that the Tribune would, before the lapse of many week?, 
supplant the Sun. To prevent this, and, if possible, to destroy the 



160 STARTS THE .TRIBUNE- 

circulation of the Tribune altogether, an attempt was made to bribe 
the carriers to give up their routes ; fortunately this succeeded only 
in the cases of two men who were likewise carriers of the Sun 
In the next place, all the newsmen were threatened with being de 
prived of the Sun, if, in any instance, they were found selling the 
Tribune. But these efforts were not enough to gratify Beach. H<» 
instigated boys in his office, or others, to whip the boys engaged 
in selling the Tribune. N^o sooner was this fact ascertained at the 
office of the Tribune, than young men were sent to defend the 
sale of that paper. They had not been on their station long, be- 
fore a boy fi-om the Sun office approached and began to flog the 
lad with the Tribune ; retributory measures were instantly resorted 
to ; but, before a just chastisement was inflicted, Beach himself, 
and a man in his employ, came out to sustain their youthful emis- 
sary. The whole matter will, we understand, be submitted to the 
proper magistrates." 

The public took up the quarrel with great spirit, and this was one 
reason of the Tribune's speedy and striking success. For three 
weeks subscribers poured in at the rate of three hundred a day ! 
It began its fourth week with an edition of six thousand ; its sev- 
enth week, with eleven thousand, which was the utmost that could 
be printed with its first press. The advertisements increased in 
proportion. The first number contained four columns ; the twelfth, 
nine columns; the hundredth, thirteen columns. Triumph! tri- 
umph ! nothing but triumph ! New presses capable of printing 
the astounding number of thirty-five hundred copies an hour are 
duly announced. The indulgence of advertisers is besought ' for 
this day only ;' ' to-morrow, their favors shall appear.' The price 
of advertising was raised from four to six cents a line. Letters of 
approval came by every mail. " We have a number of requests,'* 
said the Editor in an early paragraph, " to blow up all sorts of 
abuses, which shall be attended to as fast as possible." In another, 
he returns his thanks " to the friends of this paper and the princi- 
ples it upholds, for the addition of over a thousand substantial 
names to its subscription list last week." Again : " The Sun is rush- 
ing rapidly to destruction. It has lost even the groveling sagacity, 
the vulgar sordid instinct with which avarice once gifted it." 
Again : " Everything appears to work well with us. True, we 



CONSPIRACY TO PUT DOWN THE TRIBUNE. 161 

have not heard (except through the veracious Sun) from anji gen- 
tlemen proposing to give us a $2,500 press ; but if any gentlemen 
have such an intention, and proceed to put it in practice, the pub- 
lic may rest assured that they will not be ashamed of the act, while 
we shall be most eager to proclaim it and acknowledge the kind- 
ness. But even though we wait for such a token of good-will and 
"vaipathy until the Sun shall cease to be the slimy and venomous 
instrument of loco-focoism it is, Jesuitical and deadly in politics and 
groveling in morals — we shall be abundantly sustained and cheered 
Ly the support we are regularly receiving." Editors wrote in the 
English language in those days. Again : '' The Sun of yesterday 
gravely informed its readers tliat ' It is doubtful whether the Zand 
Bill can pass the House.'' The Tribune of the same date contained 
the news of the passage of that very bill !" Triumph ! saucy tri- 
umph ! nothing but triumph ! 

One thing only was wanting to secure the Tribune's brilliant suc- 
cess ; and that was an eflScient business partner. Just in the nick 
of time, the needed and predestined man appeared, the man of all 
others for the duty required. On Saturday morning, July 31st, the 
following notices appeared under the editorial head on the second 
page: 

The undersigned has great pleasure in announcing to his friends and the 
public that he has formed a copartnership with Thomas McElrath, and 
that The Tribune will hereafter be published by himself and Mr. M. under 
the firm of GREELEY k McELRATH. The principal Editorial charge of 
the paper will still rest with the subscriber ; while the entire business man- 
agement of the concern henceforth devolves upon his partner. This arrange- 
ment, while it relieves the undersigned from a large portion of the labors and 
cares which have pressed heavily upon him for the last four months, assures 
to the paper efl5ciency and strength in a department where they have hitherto 
been needed ; and I cannot be mistaken in the trust that the accession to its 
conduct of a gentleman who has twice been honored with their suffrages for 
an important station, will strengthen The Tribune in the confidence and 
affections of the Whigs of New York. Respectfully, 

July 31st. Horace Greeley. 

The undersigned, in connecting himself with the conduct of a public jour- 

nal, invokes a continuance of that courtesy and good feeling which has been 

extended to him by his fellow-citizens. Having heretofore received evidenca 

of kindness and regard from the eonduciors of the Whig press of this citv 

11 



162 STARTS THB TRIBUNE. 

and rejoicing in the friendship of most of them, it will be his aim in his new 
vocation to justify that kindness and strengthen and increase those friendships. 
His hearty concurrence in the principles, Political and Moral, on which The 
Tribune has thus far been conducted, has been a principal incitement to the 
connection here announced ; and the statement of this fact will preclude the 
necessity <»f any special declaration of opinions. With gratitude for past 
favors, s>-jvi an anxious desire to merit a continuance of regard, he remains. 
The Public's humble servant, Thomas McElrath. 

A «trict disciplinarian, a close calculator, a man of method and 
order experienced in business, Mr. McElrath possessed in an emi- 
nent degree the very qualities in which the editor of the Tribune 
was most deficient. Roll Horace Greeley and Thomas McElrath 
^nto one, and the result would be, a very respectable approximation 
to a Perfect Man. The two, united in partnership, have been able 
to produce a very respectable approximation to a perfect newspa- 
per. As Damon and Pythias are the types of perfect friendship, 
so may Greeley and McElrath be of a perfect partnership; and one 
may say, with a sigh at the many discordant unions the world pre- 
sents, Oh ! that every Greeley could find his McElrath ! and bless- 
ed is the McElrath that finds his Greeley ! 

Under Mr. McElrath's direction, order and efficiency were soon 
introduced into the business departments of the Tribune office. It 
became, and has ever since been, one of the best-conducted news- 
paper estabhshments in the world. Early in the fall, the New 
Yorker and Log Cabin were merged into the Weekly Tribune, the 
first number of which appeared on the 20th of September. The 
concern, thus consolidated, knew, thenceforth, nothing but prosper- 
ity. The New Yorker had existed seven years and a half; the Log 
Cabin, eighteen months. 

The Tribune, I repeat, was a live paper. It was, also, a variously 
interesting one. Its selections, which in the early volumes occupied 
several columns daily, were of high character. It gave the philos- 
ophers of the Dial an ample hearing, and many an appreciating 
notice. It made liberal extracts from Carlyle, Cousin, and others, 
whose works contained the spirit of the New Time. The eighth 
number gave fifteen songs from a new volume of Thomas Moore 
Barnaby Rudge was published entire in the first volume. Mr. Ray- 
mond's notices of new books were a conspicuous and interesting fea- 



ITS INDEPENDENCE. 168 

^ure. Still more so, were his clear and able sketches and reports of 
public lectures. In November, the Tribune gave a fair and cour- 
teous report of the Millerite Convention. About the same time, Mr. 
Greeley himself reported the celebrated McLeod trial at Utica, 
sending on from four to nine columns a day. 

Amazing was the industry of the editors. Single numbers of the 
Tribune contained eighty editorial paragraphs. Mr. Greeley's aver- 
age day's work was three columns, equal to fifteen pages of foolscap : 
and the mere writing which an editor does, is not half his daily 
l.'ibor. In May, appeared a series of articles on Retrenchment and 
Reform in the City Government, a subject upon which the Tribune 
has since shed a considerable number of barrels of ink. In the 
same month, it disturbed a hornet's nest by saying, that " the whole 
moral atmosphere of the Theater, as it actually exists among us, is 
in our judgment unwholesome, and therefore, while we do not pro- 
pose to war upon it, we seek no alliance with it, and cannot con- 
scientiously urge our readers to visit it, as would be expected if 
we were to solicit and profit by its advertising patronage." 

Down came all the hornets of the press. The Sun had the effront- 
ery to assert, in reply, that " most of the illegitimate births in New 
York owe their origin to acquaintances formed at 'Evening 
Churches,' and that ' Class-meetings ' have done more to people the 
House of Refuge than twenty times the number of theaters." This 
discussion might have been turned to great advantage by the 
Tribune, if it had not, with obstinate honesty, given the re- 
ligious world a rebuff by assertmg its right to advertise heretical 
books. 

"As to our friend," said the Tribune, "who complains, of the 
advertising of certain Theological works which do not square with 
his opinions, we must tell him plainly that he is unreasonable. No 
other paper that we ever heard of establishes any test of the Or- 
thodoxy of works advertised in its columns ; even the Commercial 
Advertiser and Journal of Commerce advertise for the very sect 
proscribed by him. If one were to attempt a discrimination, where 
would he end ? One man considers Universalisin immoral ; but 
another is equally positive that Arrainianisra is so ; while a third 
holds the same bad opinion of Calvinism. Who shall decide be- 
tween them ? Certainly not the Editor of a daily newspaper, un 



164 STARTS THE TRIBUNE. 

less hft prints it avowedly under the patronage of a particular sect 
Our friend inquires whether we should advertise infidel books also 
We answer, that if any one should offer an advertisement of lewd, 
ribald, indecent, blasphemous or law-prohibited books, we should 
claim the right to reject it. But a work no otherwise objection- 
able than as controverting the Christian record and doctrine, would 
not be objected to by us. True Christianity neither fears refutation 
nor dreads discussion — or, as Jefferson has forcibly said, ' Error 
of opinion may be tolerated where Reason is left free to combat 
it.'" 

In politics, the Tribune was strongly, yet not blindly whig. It 
appealed, in its first number, to the whig party for support. The 
same number expressed the decided opinion, that Mr. Tyler would 
prove to be, as president, all that the whigs desired, and that 
opinion the Tribune was one of the last to yield. In September 
it justified. Daniel Webster in retaining oflSce, after the 'treachery' 
of Tyler was manifest, and when all his colleagues had resigned in 
disgust. It justified him on the ground that he could best bring to 
a conclusion the Ashburton negotiations. This defense of Web- 
ster was deeply offensive to the more violent whigs, and it remain- 
ed a pretext of attack on the Tribune for several years. With 
regard to his course in the^ Tyler controversy, Mr. Greeley wrote 
in 1845 a long explanation, of which the material passage was as 
follows: — "In December, 1841, I visited Washington upon assur- 
ances that John Tyler and his advisers were disposed to return to 
the Whig party, and that I could be of service in bringing about a 
complete reconciliation between the Administration and the Whigs 
in Congress and in the country. I never proposed to 'connect 
myself with the cause of the Administration,' but upon the under- 
standing that it should be heartily and faithfully a Whig Adminis- 
tration. * * Finally, I declined utterly and absolutely, to ' con- 
nect myself with the cause of the Administration' the moment I 
became satisfied, as I did during that visit, that the Chief of the 
Government did not desire a reconciliation, upon the basis of sus- 
taining Wliig principles and Whig measures, with the party he 
had so deeply wronged, but was treacherously coqueting with Lo- 
co-Focoism, and fooled with the idea of a re-election." 

Against Repudiation, then an exciting topic, the Tribune werU 



THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. 165 

dead in many a telling article. In belialf of Protection to Ameri- 
can Industry, the editor wrote columns upon columns. 

In a word, the Tribune was equal to its opportunity ; it lived 
up to its privileges. In every department it steadily and strikingly 
improved throughout the year. It began its second year with 
twelve thousand subscribers, and a daily average of thirteen col- 
umns of advertisements. The Tribune was a Fixed Fact. 

The history of a daily paper is the history of the world. It is 
obviously impossible in the compass of a work like this to give 
anything like a complete history of the Tribune. For that pur- 
pose ten octavo volumes would be required, and most interesting 
volumes they would be. All that I can do is to select the leading 
events of its history which were most intimately connected with 
the history of its editor, and dwell with some minuteness upon 
them, connecting them together only by a slender thread of nar- 
rative, and omitting even to mention many things of real interest. 
It will be convenient, too, to group together in separate chapters 
events similar in their nature, but far removed from one another 
in the time of their occurrence. Indeed, I am overwhelmed with 
the mass of materials, and must struggle out as best I can. 

A great book is a great evil, says the Greek Reader. This book 
was fore-ordained to be a small one. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. 

What made Horace Greeley a Socialist— Tte hard winter of 1838— Albert Brisbane- 
Tbe subject broached— Series of articles by Mr. Brisbane begun— Their effect— Cry 
of Mad Dog— Discussion between Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond— How it 
arose— Abstract of it in a conversational form. 

The editor of the Tribune was a Socialist years before the Tri- 
bune came into existence. 

The winter of 1838 was unusually severe. The times were hard, 



166 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. 

fael and food were dear, many thousands of men and women were 
out of employment, and there was general distress. As the cold 
months wore slowly on, the sufferings of the poor became so aggra- 
vated, and the number of the unemployed increased to such a de- 
gree, that the ordinary means were inadequate to relieve even those 
who were destitute of every one of the necessaries of life. Some 
died of starvation. Some were frozen to death. Many, through 
exposure and privation, contracted fatal diseases. A large number, 
who had never before known want, were reduced to beg. Ee- 
spectable mechanics were known to offer their services as waiters 
in eating-houses for their food only. There never had been such a 
time of suffering in New York before, and there has not been since. 
Extraordinary measures were taken by the comfortable classes to 
alleviate the sufferings of their unfortunate fellow-citizens. Meet- 
ings were held, subscriptions were made, committees were appoint- 
ed ; and upon one of the committees Horace Greeley was named to 
serve, and did serve, faithfully and laboriously, for many weeks. 
Tlie district which his committee had in charge was the Sixth Ward, 
the ' bloody' Sixth, the squalid, poverty-stricken Sixth, the pool into 
which all that is worst in this metropolis has a tendency to reel and 
slide. It was his task, and that of his colleagues, to see that no one 
froze or starved in that forlorn and polluted region. More than this 
they could not do, for the subscriptions, liberal as they were, were 
not more than sufficient to relieve actual and pressing distress. In 
the better parts of the Sixth Ward a large number of mechanics 
lived, whose cry was, not for the bread and the fuel of charity, but 
for Work! Charity their honest souls disdained. Its food choked 
them, its fire chilled them. Work, give us work ! was their eager, 
passionate demand. 

All this Horace Greeley heard and saw. He was a young man — 
not quite twenty-six — compassionate to weakness, generous to a 
fault. He had known what it was to beg for work, from shop to 
shop, from town to town ; and, that very winter, he was struggling 
with debt, at no safe distance from bankruptcy. Why must these 
things be ? Are they inevitable ? Will they always be inevitable ? 
Is it in human wisdom to. devise a remedy? in human virtue to ap- 
ply it ? Can the beneficent God have designed this, who, with such 
wonderful profusion, has provided for the wants, tastes, and luxuries 



ALBERT BRISBANE. 167 

of all his creatures, and for a hundred times as many creatures as 
yet have lived at the same time ? Such questions Horace Greeley 
pondered, in silence, in the depths of his heart, during that winter 
of misery. 

From Paris came soon the calm, emphatic answer, These things 
need not be ! They are due alone to the short-sightedness and in- 
justice of man 1 Albert Brisbane brought the message. Horace 
Greeley heard and believed it. He took it to his heart. It became 
a part of him. 

Albert Brisbane was a young gentleman of liberal education, the 
son of wealthy parents. His European tour included, of course, a 
residence at Paris, where the fascinating dreams of Fourier were 
the subject of conversation. He procured the works of tliat ami- 
able and noble-minded man, read them with eager interest, and be- 
came completely convinced that his captivating theories were capa- 
ble of speedy realization — not, perhaps, in slow and conservative 
Europe, but in progressive and unshackled America. He returned 
home a Fourierite, and devoted himself with a zeal and disinterest- 
edness that are rare in the class to which he belonged, and that in 
any class cannot be too highly praised, to the dissemination of the 
doctrines in which he believed. He wrote essays and pamphlets. 
He expounded Fourierism in conversation. He started a magazine 
called the Future, devoted to the explanation of Fourier's plans, 
published by Greeley & Co. He delivered lectures. In short, he 
did all that a man could do to make known to his fellow men what 
he believed it became them to know. He made a few converts, 
but only a few, till the starting of the Tribune gave him access to 
the public ear. 

Horace Greeley made no secret of his conversion to Fourierism. 
On the contrary, he avowed it constantly in private, and occasion- 
ally in public print, though never in his own paper till towards the 
end of the Tribune's first year. His native sagacity taught him that 
before Fourierism could be realized, a complete revolution in pub- 
lic sentiment must be effected, a revolution which would require 
many years of patient effort on the part of its advocates. 

The first mention of Mr. Brisbane and Fourierism in the Tribune, 
appeared October 21st, 1841. It was merely a notice of one of 
Mr. Brisbane's lectures : 



168 THE TRIBUNE A^D FOURIERISM. 

*' Mr. A. Brisbane delivered a lecture at the Stuy vesant Institute last evening 
upon the Genius of Christianity considered in its bearing on the Social Insti- 
tutions and Terrestrial Destiny of the Human Race. He contended that the 
mission of Christianity upon earth has hitherto been imperfectly understood, 
and that the doctrines of Christ, carried into practical eflfect, would free the 
world of Want, Misery, Temptation and Crime. This, Mr. B. believes, will be 
effected by a system of Association, or the binding up of indiridual and fam- 
ily interests in Social and Industrial Communities, wherein all faculties may 
be developed, all energies usefully employed, all legitimate desires satisfied, 
and idleness, want, temptation and crime be annihilated. In such Associa- 
tions, individual property will be maintained, the family be held sacred, and 
every inducement held out to a proper ambition. Mr. B. will lecture hereafter 
on the practical details of the system of Fourier^ of whom he is a zealous dis- 
ciple, and we shall then endeavor to give a more clear and full account of hia 
doctrines." 

A month later, the Tribune copied a flippant and sneering arti- 
cle from the London Times, on the subject of Fourierisra in France 
In his introductory remarks the editor said : 

" We have written something, and shall yet write much more, in illustra- 
tion and advocacy of the great Social revolution which our age is destined to 
commence, in rendering all useful Labor at once attractive and honorable, 
and banishing Want and all consequent degradation from the globe. The 
germ of this revolution is developed in the writings of Charles Fourier, a phil- 
anthropic and observing Frenchman, who died in 1837, after devoting thirty 
years of a studious and unobtrusive life to inquiries, at once patient and pro- 
found, into the causes of the great mass of Social evils whi?h overwhelm Hu- 
manity, and the true means of removing them. These means he proves to be 
a system of Industrial and Household Association, on the principle of Joint 
Stock Investment, whereby Labor will be ennobled and rendered attractive 
and universal. Capital be offered a secure and lucrative investment, and Tal- 
ent and Industry find appropriate, constant employment, and adequate re- 
ward, while Plenty, Comfort, and the best means of Intellectual and Moral 
Improvement is guaranteed to all, regardless of former acquirements or con- 
dition. This grand, benignant plan is fully developed in the various works 
of M. Fourier, which are abridged in the single volume on ' The Social Des- 
tiny of Man,' by Mr. A. Brisbane, of this State. Some fifteen or sixteen other 
works in illustration and defense of the system have been given to the world, 
by Considerant, Chevalier, Paget, and other French writers, and by Hugh Do- 
herty. Dr. H. McCormack. and others in English. A tri-weekly journal [^ La 
Phalange^) devoted to the system, is published by M. Victor Considerant Id 



SERIES OF ARTICLES BY MR. BRISBANE BEGUN. 169 

Paris, and another (the 'London Phalanx ') by Hugh Doherty, in London, 
each ably edited." 

Early in 1842, a number of gentlemen associated themselves to- 
gether for the purpose of bringing the schemes of Fourier fully and 
prominently before the public; and to this end, they purchased the 
right to occupy one column daily on the first page of the Tribune 
with an article, or articles, on the subject, from the pen of Mr. 
Brisbane. The first of these articles appeared on the first of March, 
1842, and continued, with some interruptions, at first daily, after- 
wards three times a week, till about the middle of 1844, when Mr, 
Brisbane went again to Europe. The articles were signed with the 
letter B, and were known to be communicated. They were calm 
in tone, clear in exposition. At first, they seem to have attracted 
little attention, and less opposition. They were regarded (as far as 
my youthful recollection serves) in the light of articles to be skip- 
ped, and by most of the city readers of the Tribune, 1 presume, 
they were skipped with the utmost regularity, and quite as a matter 
of course. Occasionally, however, the subject was alluded to edi- 
torially, and every such allusion was of a nature to be read. Grad- 
ually, Fourierism became one of the topics of the time, (xradually 
certain editors discovered that Fourierism was unchristian. Grad- 
ually, the cry of Mad Dog arose. Meanwhile, the articles of Mr. 
Brisbane were having their etfect upon the People. 

In May, 1843, Mr. Greeley wrote, and with perfect truth : 

" The Doctrine of Association is spreading throughout the country with a 
rapidity which we did not anticipate, and of which we had but little hope. 
W« receive papers from nearly all parts of the Northern and Western States, 
anH some from the South, containing articles upon Association, in which gen- 
eral views and outlines of the System are given. They speak of the subject 
as one ' which is calling public attention,' or, ' about which so much is now 
said,' or, 'which is a good deal spoken of in this part of the country,' &c., 
showing that our Principles are becoming a topic of public discussion. From 
the rapid progress of our Doctrines during the past year, we look forward 
with hope to their rapid continued dissemination. We feel perfectly confident 
that never, in the history of the world, has a philosophical doctrine, or the plan 
of a great reform, spread with the rapidity which the Doctrine of Association 
has spread in the United States for the last year or two. There are now a 
large number of papers, and quite a number of lecturers in various parts of 



170 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. 

the country, who are lending their eflforts to the cause, so that the onward 
movement must be greatly accelerated. 

"Small Associations are springing up rapidly in various parts of the coun- 
try. The Sylvania Association in Pike country, Pa., is now in operation i 
about seventy persons are on the domain, erecting buildings, Ac, and prepar- 
'aig for the reception of other members. 

" An Association has been organized in Jefferson county. Our friend, A. 
M. Watson, is at the head of it; he has been engaged for the last three years 
in spreading the principles in that part of the State, and the result is the 
formation of an Association. Several farmers have put in their farms and 
taken stock ; by this means the Domain has been obtained. About three 
hundred persons, we are informed, are on the lands. They have a very fine 
quarry on their Domain, and they intend, among the branches of Industry 
which they will pursue, to take contracts for erecting buildings out of the 
Association. They are now erecting a banking-house in Watertown, near 
which the Association is located. 

" Efforts are making in various parts of this State, in Vermont, in Penn- 
sylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, to establish Associations, which will probably 
be successful in the course of the present year. We have heard of the«e 
movements; there may be others of which we are not informed." 

About the same time, he gave a box on the ear to the editors who 
wrote of Fourierism in a hostile spirit: — "The kindness of our friends 
of the New York Express, Rochester Evening Post, and sundry 
other Journals which appear inclined to Avage a personal controversj 
with us respecting Fourierism, (the Express without knowing how to 
spell the word,) is duly appreciated. Had we time and room for 
disputation on that subject, we would prefer opponents jvho would 
not be compelled to confess frankly or betray clearly their utter 
ignorance of the matter, whatever might be their manifestations of 
personal pique or malevolence in unfair representations of the little 
they do understand. We counsel our too belligerent friends to pos- 
pess their souls in patience, and not be too eager to rival the for- 
tune of him whose essay proving that steamships could not cross 
the Atlantic happened to reach us in the first steamship that did 
cross it. ' The proof of the pudding ' is not found in wrangling 
about it." 

We also find, occasionally, a paragraph in the Tribune like this : 
" T. W. Whitley and H. Greeley will address such citizens of New- 
ark as choose to hear them on the subject of ' Association ' at 7j 



DISCUSSION BETWEEN H. GREELEY AND H. J. RAYMOND. 171 

o'clock this evening at the Relief Hall, rear of J. M. Qiiimby's Re- 
pository." 

Too fast. Too fast. I need not detail the progress of Fourier- 
ism — the many attempts made to establish Associations — the failure 
of all of them but one, which still exists — the ruin that ensued to 
many worthy men — the ridicule with which the Associationists were 
assailed — the odium excited in many minds against the Tribune — 
the final relinquishment of the subject. All this is perfectly well 
known to the people of this country. • 

Let us come, at once, to the grand climax of the Tribune's Fou- 
rierism, the famous discussion of the subject between Horace Gree- 
ley and H. J. Raymond, of the Courier and Enquirer, in the year 
1846, That discussion finished Fourierism in the United States. 

Mr. Raymond had left the Tribune, and joined the Courier and 
Enquirer, at the solicitation of Col. Webb, the editor of the latter. 
it was a pity the Tribune let him go, for he is a born journalist, and 
could have helped the Tribune to attain the position of the great, 
only, undisputed Metropolitan Journal, many years sooner than it 
will. Horace Greeley is not a born journalist. He is too much in 
earnest to be a perfect editor. He has too many opinions and pref- 
erences. He is a bokn legislator, a Deviser of Remedies, a Sug- 
gester of Expedients, a Framer of Measures. The most successful 
editor is he whose great endeavor it is to tell the public all it wants 
to hnow, and whose comments on passing events best express the 
feeling of the country with regard to them. Mr. Raymond is 
not a man of first-rate talent — great talent would be in his way — 
he is most interesting when he attacks; and of the varieties of 
composition, polished vituperation is not the most aifficult. But 
he has the right notion of editing a daily paper, and when the Tri- 
bune lost him, it lost more than it had the slightest idea of— a8 
events have since shown. 

However, Horace Greeley and Henry J. Raymond, the one nat- 
urally liberal, the other naturally conservative — the one a Universal- 
ist, the other a Presbyterian — the one regarding the world as a 
place to be made better by living in it, the other regarding it as 
an oyster to be opened, and bent on opening it — would have found 
it hard to work together on equal terms. They separated amicably, 
and each went hist way. The discussion of Fourierism arose thus; 



172 THE TRIBUNE aND FOURIERISM. 

Mr. Brisbane, on his return from Europe, renewed the agitation 
of his subject. The Tribune of August 19th, 1846, contained a 
letter by him, addressed to the editors of the Courier and Enquirer, 
proposing several questions, to which answers were requested, 
respecting Social Reform. The Courier replied. The Tribune re- 
joined editorially, and was answered in turn by the Courier. Mr. 
Brisbane addressed a second letter to the Courier, and sent it 
direct to the editor of that paper in manuscript. The Courier 
agreed to publish it, if the Tribune would give place to its reply. 
The Tribune declined doing so, but challenged the editor of the 
Courier to a public discussion of the whole subject. 

" Though we cannot now," wrote Mr. Greeley, " open our col- 
umns to a set discussion by others of social questions (which may 
or may not refer mainly to points deemed relevant by us), we readily 
close with the «pm/ of the Courier's proposition. * * As soon 
as the State election is fairly over — say Nov. 10th — we will pub- 
lish an entire article, filling a column of the Tribune, very nearly, 
in favor of Association as we understand it ; and, upon the Courier 
copying this and replying, we will give place to its reply, and re- 
spond ; and so on, till each party shall have published twelve articles 
on its own side, and twelve on the other, which shall fulfill the 
terms of this agreement. All the twelve articles of each party 
shall be published without abridgment or variation in the Daily, 
Weekly, and Semi-weekly editions of both papers. Afterward each 
party will, of course, be at liberty to comment at pleasure in Ills 
own columns. In order that neither paper shall be crowded with 
this discussion, one article per week, only, on either side, shall be 
published, unless the Courier shall prefer greater dispatch. Is not 
this a fair proposition? What says the Courier? It has, of course, 
the advantage of the defensive position and of the last word." 

The Courier said, after much toying and dallying, and a pre- 
liminary skirmish of paragraphs. Come on! and, on the 20th of 
November, the Tribune came on. The debate lasted six montha 
It was conducted on both sides with spirit and ability, and it at- 
tracted much attention. The twenty-four articles, of which it con- 
sisted, were afterwards published by the Harpers in a pamphlet of 
eighty-three closely-printed, double-columned pages, which had a 
considerable sale, and has long been out of print. On one side 



ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 178 

we see earnestness and sincerity ; on the other tact and skill 
One strove to convince, the other to triumph. Tlie thread of ar- 
gument is often lost in a maze of irrelevancy. The subject, in- 
deed, was peculiarly ill calculated for a public discussion. When 
naen converse on a scheme which has for its object the good of 
mankind, let them confer in awful whispers — apart, like conspir- 
ators , not distract themselves in dispute in the hearing of a nation ; 
for they who would benefit mankind must do it either by stealth 
or by violence. 

I have tried to condense this tremendous pamphlet into the form 
and brevity of a conversation, with the following result. Neither 
of the speakers, however, are to be held responsible for the language 
employed. 

Horace Greeley. Nov. 20th. The earth, the air, the waters, the 
sunshine, with their natural products, were divinely intended and 
appointed for the sustenance and enjoyment of the whole human 
family. But the present /aci is, that a very large majority of man- 
kind are landless ; and, by law, the landless have no inherent right 
to stand on a single square foot of their native State, except in the 
highways. Perishing with cold, they have no legal right to a stick 
of decaying fuel in the most unfrequented morass. Famishing, they 
have no legal right to pluck and eat the bitterest acorn in the depths 
of the remotest forest. But tlie Past cannot be recalled. What 
has been done, has been done. The legal rights of individuals must 
be held sacred. But those whom society has divested of their natu- 
ral right to a share in the soil, are entitled to Compensation., i. e. to 
continuous opportunity to earn a subsistence by Labor. To own 
land is to possess this opportunity. The majority own no land. 
Therefore the minority, who own legally all the land, which natu- 
rally belongs to all men alike, are bound to secure to the landless 
majority a compensating security of remunerating Labor. But, as 
society is now organized, this is not, and cannot be, done. " Work, 
work ! give us something to do! anything that will secure us hon- 
est bread," is at this moment the prayer of not less than thirty 
thousand human beings within the sound of the City-Hall hell. 
Here is an enormous waste and loss. We must devise a remedy 
and that remedy, I propose to show, is found in Association. 



174 THE TRIBUNE AND«FOURIERISM. 

H. J. Raymond. J^ov. 23^. Heavens ! Here we have one of the 
leading Whig presses of New York advocating the doctrine that no 
man can rightfully own land ! Fanny Wright was of that opinion. 
The doctrine is erroneous and dangerous. If a man cannot right- 
fully own land, he cannot rightfully own anything which the land 
produces; that is, he cannot rightfully own anything at all. The 
blessed institution of pi'operty, the basis of the social fabric, from 
which arts, agriculture, commerce, civilization spring, and without 
which they could not exist, is threatened with destruction, and by 
a leading Whig paper too. Conservative Powers, preserve us ! 

Horace Greeley. Nov. 26th. Fudge! What I said was this : So- 
ciety, having divested the majority of any right to the soil, is bound 
to compensate them by guaranteeing to each an opportunity of earn- 
ing a subsistence by Labor. Your vulgar, clap-trap allusion to Fan- 
ny Wright does not surprise me. I shall neither desert nor deny a 
truth because she, or any one else, has proclaimed it. But to pro- 
ceed. By association I mean a Social Order, which shall take the 
place of the present Township, to be composed of some hundreds 
or some thousands of persons, who shall be united together in inter- 
est and industry for the purpose of securing to each individual the 
following things : 1, an elegant and commodious house ; 2, an edu- 
cation, complete and thorough ; 3, a secure subsistence ; 4, oppor- 
tunity to labor ; 5, fair wages ; 6, agreeable social relations ; 7, prog- 
ress in knowledge and skill. As society is at present organized, 
these are the portion of a very small minority. But by association 
of capital and industry, they might become the lot of all ; inasmuch 
as association tends to Economy in all departments, economy in 
lands, fences, fuel, household labor, tools, education, medicine, legal 
advice, and commercial exchanges. My opponent will please ob- 
serve that his article is three times as long as mine, and devoted in 
good part to telling the public that the Tribune is an exceedingly 
mischievous paper ; which is an imposition. 

H. J. Raymond. Nov. iiOth. A home, fair wages, education, etc., 
are very desirable, we admit; and it is the unceasing aim of all good 
men in society, as it now exists, to place those blessings within the 
reach of all. The Tribune's claim that it can be accomplished only 
by association is only a claim. Substantiate it. Give us proof ol 



ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 175 

its efficacy. Tell us in whom the property is to he vested, ho"^ 
labor is to be remunerated, what share capital is to have in the con- 
cern, by what device men are to be induced to labor, how moral 
offenses are to be excluded or punished. Then we may be able to 
discuss the subject. Nothing was stipulated about the length of the 
articles ; and we do think the Tribune a mischievous paper. 

Horace Oreeley. Dec. 1st. The property of an association will 
be vested in those who contributed the capital to establish it, repre- 
sented by shares of stock, just as the property of a bank, factory, or 
railroad now is. Labor, skill and talent, will be remunerated by a 
fixed proportion of their products, or of its proceeds, if sold. Men 
will be induced to labor by a knowledge that its rewards will be a 
certain and major proportion of the product, which of course will 
be less or more according to the skill and industry of each individ- 
ual. The slave has no motive to diligence except fear ; the hireling 
is tempted to eye-service ; the solitary worker for himself is apt to 
become disheartened ; but men working for themselves, in groups, 
will find labor not less attractive than profitable. Moral offenses 
will be punished by legal enactment, and they will be rendered un 
frequent by plenty and education. 

H. J. Raymond. Dec. 8th. Oh — then the men of capital are to 
own the land, are they? Let us see. A man with money enough 
may buy an entire domain of five thousand acres; men without 
money will cultivate it on condition of receiving a fixed proportion 
of its products ; the major part, says the Tribune ; suppose we say 
three-fourtJis. Then the contract is simply this: — One rich man 
{or company) owns Jive thousand acres of land, which he leases forever 
to two thousand poor men at the yearly rent of onefourth of its 
products. It is an affair of landlord and tenant — the lease perpet- 
ual, payment in kind; and the landlord to own the cattle, tools, 
and furniture of the tenant, as well as the land. Association, then, 
is merely a plan for extending the relation of landlord and tenant 
over the whole arable surface of the earth. 

Horace Greeley. Dec. 10th. By no means. The capital of a 
mature association would be, perhaps, half a million of dollars ; it 



176 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. 

an infant assoeation, fifty thousand dollars; and this increase of 
value would be both created and oicned by Labor. In an ordinary 
township, however, the increase, though all created by Labor, ia 
chiefly owned by Capital. The majority of the inhabitants remain 
poor; while a few —merchants, land-owners, mill-owners, and manu- 
facturers — are enriched. That tliis is the fact in recently-settled 
townships, is undeniable. That it would not be the fact in a town- 
ship settled and cultivated on the principle of association, seems to 
me equally so. 

H. J. Raymond. Dec \4:th. But not to me. Suppose fifty men 
furnish fifty thousand dollars for an association upon which a hun- 
dred and fifty others are to labor and to live. With that sum they 
buy the land, build the houses, and procure everything needful for 
the start. The capitalists, bear in mind, are the absolute owners of 
the entire property of the association. In twenty years, that prop- 
erty may be worth half a million, and it still remains the property 
of the capitalists, the laborers having annually drawn their share of 
the products. They may have saved a portion of their annual 
share, and thus have accunmlated property ; but they have no more 
title to the domain than they had at first. If the concern should 
not prosper, the laborers could not buy shares; if it should, the 
capitalists would not sell except at their increased value. What 
advantage, then, does association ofiier for the poor man's acquiring 
property superior to that afibrded by the present state of things ? 
None, that we can see. On the contrary, the more rapidly the 
domain of an association should increase in value, the more difficult 
it would be for the laboring man to rise to the class of proprietors ; 
and this would simply be an aggravation of the worst features of 
the social system. And how you associationists would quarrel ! The 
skillful would be ever grumbling at the awkward, and the lazy would 
shirk their share of the work, but clamor for their share of the 
product. There would be ten occasions for bickerings where now 
there is one. The fancies of the associationist, in fact, are as base- 
less, though not as beautiful, as More's Utopia, or the Happy Valley 
of Rasselas. 

Horace Greeley Dec. IQth. l^o, Sir / In association, those who 



ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 177 

furnish the original capital are the owners merely of so much stocli 
in the concern — not of all the land and other property, as you repre- 
sent. Suppose ths^t capital to be fifty thousand dollars. At the end 
of the first year it is found that twenty-five thousand dollars have 
been added to the value of the property by Labor. For this amount 
new stock is issued, which is apportioned to Capital, Labor and Skill 
as impartial justice shall dictate — to the non-resident capitalist a 
certain proportion ; to the working capitalist the same proportion, 
plus the excess of his earnings over his expenses; to the laborer 
that excess only. The apportionment is repeated every year ; and 
the proportion of the new stock assigned to Capital is such that 
when the property of the association is worth half a million, Capi- 
tal will own about one-fifth of it. With regard to the practical 
working of association, I point you to the fact that association and 
civilization are one. They advance and recede together. In this 
age we have large steamboats, monster hotels, insurance, partner- 
ships, joint stock companies, public schools, libraries, police. Odd 
Fellowship— all of which are exemplifications of the idea upon 
which association is based ; all of which work well as institutions, 
and are productive of incalculable benefits to mankind. 



H. J. Raymond. Dec. Mth. Of course; — but association as- 
sumes to shape and govern the details of social life^ which is a very 
different afiair. One '- group^ it appears, is to do all the cooking, 
another the gardening, another the ploughing. But suppose that 
some who want to be cooks are enrolled in the gasdening group. 
They will naturally sneer at the dishes cooked by their rivals, per- 
haps form a party for the expulsion of the cooks, and so bring about 
a kitchen war. Then, who will consent to be a member of the 
boot-blacking, ditch-digging and sink-cleaning groups? Such labors 
must be done, and groups must be detailed to do them. Then, who 
is to settle the wages question ? Who is to determine upon the com- 
parative eflSciency of each laborer, and settle the comparative value 
of his work? There is the religious difficulty too, and the educa- 
tional difficulty, the medical difficulty, and numberless other diffi- 
culties, arising from differences of opinion, so radical and so earnest- 
ly entertained as to preclude the possibility of a large number of 



178 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. 

persons living together in the intimate relation contemplated b} 
association. 

Horcce Greeley. Dec. 28th. Not so fast. After the first steam- 
ship h&,d crossed the Atlantic all the demonstrations of the impos- 
sibility of that fact fell to the ground. Now, with regard to as- 
sociations, the Ji7'st steamship has crossed I The communities of 
Zoar and Rapp have existed from twenty to forty years, and several 
associations of the kind advocated by me have survived from two 
to five years, not only without being broken up by the difficulties 
alluded to, but without their presenting themselves in the Hght of 
difficulties at all. No inter-kitchen war has disturbed their peace, 
no religious differences have marred their harmony, and men have 
been found willing to perform ungrateful offices, required by the 
general good. Passing over your objections, therefore, I beg you 
to consider the enormous difficulties, the wrongs, the waste, the mis- 
ery, occasioned by and inseparable from society as it is now organ- 
ized. For example, the coming on of winter contracts business and 
throws thousands out of employment. They and their families suf- 
fer, the dealers who supply them are losers in custom, the alms- 
house is crowded, private charity is taxed to the extreme, many die 
of diseases induced by destitution, some are driven by despair to 
intoxication ; and all this, while every ox and horse is well fed and 
cared for, while there is inaccessible plenty all , around, while capi- 
tal is luxuriating on the products of the very labor which is now pal- 
sied and suffering. Under the present system, capital is everything, 
man nothing, except as a means of accumulating capital. Capital 
founds a factory, and for the single purpose of increasing capital, 
taking no thought of the human beings by whom it is increased. 
The fundamental ideas of association, on the other hand, is to effect 
a just distribution of products among capital, talent and labor. 

S^. J. Raymond. Jan. 6th. The idea may be good enough ; 
but the means are impracticable ; the details are absurd, if not in- 
humane and impious. The Tribune's admission, that an association 
of indolent or covetous persons could not endure without a moral 
transformation of its members., seems to us fatal to the whole theory 
of association. It implies that individual reform must precede so 



ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 179 

cial reform, which is precisely our position. But hotv *« individual 
reform to be effected ? By association^ says the Tribune. That is, 
the motion of the water-wheel is to produce the water h} which 
alone it can be set in motion — the action of the watch is to pro- 
duce the main-spring without which it cannot move. Absurd. 

Horace Greeley. Jan. l^th. Incorrigible mis-stater of my posi- 
tions ! I am as well aware as you are that the mass of the igno- 
rant and destitute are, at pre&ent, incai)able of so much as under- 
standing the social order I propose, much less of becoming efficient 
members of an association. What I say is, let those who are capa- 
(ole of understanding and promoting it, begin the work, found asso- 
ciations, and show the rest of mankind how to live and thrive in 
harmonious industry. You tell me that the sole efficient agency of 
Social Reform is Christianity. I answer that association is Chris- 
tianity ; and the dislocation now existing between capital and labor, 
between the capitalist and the laborer, is as atheistic as it is in- 
human. 

H. J. Raymond. Jan. 20th. Stop a moment. The test of true 
benevolence is practice, not preaching; and we have no hesitation 
in saying that the members of any one of our city churches do 
more every year for the practical relief of poverty and suffering 
than any phalanx that ever existed. There are in our midst hun- 
dreds of female sewing societies, each of which clothes more naked- 
ness and feeds more hunger, than any ' association ' that ever was 
formed. There is a single individual in this city whom the Tribune 
has vilified as a selfish, grasping despiser of the poor, who has ex- 
pended more money in providing the poor with food, clothing, evlu- 
euation, sound instruction in morals and religion, than all the advo- 
cates of association in half a century. "While association has been 
theorizing about starvation, Christianity has been preventing it. 
Associationists tell us, that giving to the poor deepens the evil 
which it aims to relieve, and that the bounty of the benevolent, as 
society is now organized, is very often abused. We assure them, it 
is not the social system which abuses the bounty of the benevolent ; 
It is simply the dlai^onesty and indolence of individuals, and they 
would do the same under any system, and especially in association. 



180 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. 

• 

Horace Greeley. Jan. 29 ^A. Private benevolence is good and 
Q<5cessary ; the Tribune has ever been its cordial and earnest ad- 
vocate. But benevolence relieves only tbe effects of poverty, while 
Association proposes to reach and finally eradicate its causes. The 
charitable are doing nobly this winter for the re^'ief of the destitute : 
but will there be in this city next winter fewer objects of charity 
than there are now ? And let me tell you, sir, if you do not know 
it already, that the advocates of association, in proportion to their 
number, and their means, are, at least, as active and as ready in 
feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, as any class in the com- 
munity. Make the examinations as close as you please, bring it as 
near home as you like, and you will find the fact to be as I have 
asserted. 

H. J. Raymond. Feb. \Oth. You overlook one main objection. 
Association aims, not merely to re-organize Labor, but to revolu- 
tionize Society, to change radically Laws, Government, Manners 
and Religion. It pretends to be a new Social Science, discovered 
by Fourier. In our next article we shall show what its principles 
are, and point out their inevitable tendency. 

Horace Greeley. Feb. 17th. Do so. Meanwhile let me remind 
you, that there is need of a new Social System, when the old one 
works so villanously and wastefully. There is Ireland, with three 
hundred thousand able-bodied men, willing to work, yet uneni' 
ployed. Their labor is worth forty-five millions of dollars a year, 
which they need, and Ireland needs, but which the present Social 
System dooms to waste. There is work enough in Ireland to do, 
and men enough -willing to do it ; but the spell of a vicious Social 
System broods over the island, and keeps the woikmen and the 
work apart. Four centuries ago, the English laborer could earn 
by his labor a good and sufficient subsistence for his ^"aniily. Since 
that time Labor and Talent have made England rich ' beyond the 
dreams of avarice ;' and, at this day, the Laborer, as a rule, cannot, 
by unremitting toil, fully supply the necessities of his family. His 
bread is coarse, his clothing scanty, his home a hovel, his childrer 
uninstructed, his life cheerless. He lives from hand to mouth ir 
abject terror of the poor-house, waere, he shudders to think, he 



ABSTRACT OF THE DISJUSSION. 181 

must end his days. Precisely the same causes are in operation 
here, and, in due time, will produce precisely the same efifects. 
There is need of a Social Re-formation ! 

R. J. Raymond. March 3^. You are mistaken. The state- 
Mient that the laborers of the present day are worse off than those 
of former ages, has been exploded. They are not. On the contrary, 
their condition is letter in every respect. Evils under the present 
Social System exist, great evils — evils, for the removal of which 
the most constant and zealous efforts ought to be made ; yet they 
are very far from being as great or as general as the Associationists 
assert. The fact is indisputable, that, as a rule throughout the 
country, no honest man, able and willing to work, need stand idle 
from lack of opportunity. The exceptions to this rule are com- 
paratively few, and arise from temporary and local causes. But we 
proceed to examine the fundamental principle of the Social System 
proposed to be substituted for that now established. In one word, 
that principle is Self-indulgence ! " Reason and Passion," writes 
Parke Godwin, the author of one of the clearest expositions of So- 
cialism yet pubhshed, "will be in perfect accord: duty and pleas- 
ure will have the same meaning ; without inconvenience ot calcu- 
lation, man will follow his bent : hearing only of Attraction, he will 
never act from necessity, and never curb himself by restraints.''^ 
What becomes of the self-denial so expressly, so frequently, so em- 
phatically enjoined by the New Testament ? Fourierism and Chris- 
tianity, Fourierism and Morality, Fourierism and Conjugal Constancy 
are in palpable hostility ! We are told, that if a man has a passion 
for a dozen kinds of work, he joins a dozen groups ; if for a dozen 
kinds of study, he joins a dozen groups ; and, if for a dozen women, 
the System requires that there.-jmust be a dozen different groups for 
his full gratification ! For man will follow his bent, and never curb 
himself by restraints ! 

Horace Greeley . March \^th. Not so. I re-assert what I before 
proved, that the English laborers of to-day are worse off than those 
of former centuries ; and I deny with disgust and indignation that 
there is in Socialism, as American Socialists understand and teach it, 
any provision or license for the gratification of criminal passions oj 



182 THE TRIBUNE AND FOURIERISM. 

unlawful desires. Why not quote Mr. Godwin fully and fairly » 
Why suppress his remark, that, " So long as the Passions may 
bring forth Disorder — so long as Inclination may he in opposition 
to Duty — we reprobate as strongly as any class of men all indulg- 
ence of the inclinations and feelings ; and where Reason is unable 
to guide thera, have no objection to other means" ? Socialists know 
nothing of Groups, organized, or to be organized, for the perpetra- 
tion of crimes, or the practice of vices. 

H. J. Raymond. March l^tTi. Perhaps not. But 1 know, from 
the writings of leading Socialists, that the law of Passional Attrac- 
tion, i. e. Self-indulgence, is the essential and fundamental principle 
of Association ; and that, while Christianity pronounces the free 
and full gratification of the passions a crime^ Socialism extols it as 
a virtue. 

Horace Greeley. March 1%th. Impertinent. Your articles are all 
entitled " The Socialism of the Tribune examined" ; and the Tri- 
bune has never contained a line to justify your unfair inferences 
from garbled quotations from the writings of Godwin and Fourier. 
What the Tribune advocates is, simply and solely, such an organiza- 
tion of Society as will secure to every man the opportunity of unin- 
terrupted and profitable labor, and to every child nourishment and 
culture. These things, it is undeniable, the present Social System 
4oes not secure; and hence the necessity of a new and better organ- 
ization. So no more of your ' Passional Attraction,' 

M. J. Raymond. April 16th. I tell you the scheme of Fourier is 
essentially and fundamentally irreligious ! by which I mean that it 
coes not follow my Catechism, and apparently ignores the Thirty- 
Nine Articles. Shocking. 

Horace Greeley., April 28 1^. Humph 1 

H. J. Raymond. May 10th. The Tribune is doing a great deal of 
harm. The editor does not know it — but it is. 



Thus ended Fourierism. Thenceforth, the Tribune alluded to tho 



THE tribune's SECOND TEAR. 183 

subject occasionally, but only in reply to those who sought to make 
political or personal capital by reviving it. By its discussion of the 
subject it rendered a great service to the country : first, by afibrd- 
ing one more proof that, for the ills that flesh is heir to, there is, 
there can be, no panacea ; secondly, by exhibiting the economy of 
association, and familiarizing the public mind with the idea of asso- 
ciation — an idea susceptible of a thousand apphcations, and capable, 
in a thousand ways, of alleviating and preventing human woes. 
"We see its perfect triumph in Insurance, whereby a loss whicli 
would crush an individual falls upon the whole company of insur- 
ers, lightly and unperceived. Future ages will witness its success- 
ful application to most of the afiairs of life. 



CHAPTER XV. 



Increase of price— The Tribune offends the Sixth Ward fighting-men— The office threat- 
ened—Novel preparations for defense — Charles Dickens defended — The Editor 
travels — Visits Washington, and sketches the Senators — At Mount Vernon — At 
Niagara— A hard hit at Major Noah. 

The Tribune, as we have seen, was started as a penny paper. It 
began its second volume, on the eleventh of April, 1842, at the in- 
creased price of nine cents a week, or two cents for a single num- 
oer, and effected this serious advance without losing two hundred 
Df its twelve thousand subscribers. At the same time, Messrs. Gree- 
ley and McElrath started the ' American Laborer,' a monthly maga- 
cine, devoted chiefly to the advocacy of Protection. It was pub- 
lished at seventy-five cents for the twelve numbers which the pros- 
pectus announced. 

When it was remarked, a few pages back, that the word with the 
Tribune was Fight, no allusion was intended to the use of carnal 
weapons. "The pen is mightier than the sword," claptraps Bulwer 
in one of his plays ; and the Pen was the only fighting implement 



184 

referred to. It came to pass, however, in the first month of the 
Tribune's second year, that the pointed nib of the warlike journal 
gave deadly umbrage to certain fighting men of the Sixth Ward, by 
exposing their riotous conduct on the day of the Spring elections. 
The office was, in consequence, threatened by the offended parties 
with a nocturnal visit, and the oflSce, alive to the duty of hospital- 
ity, prepared to give the expected guests a suitable reception by 
arming itself to the chimneys. 

This (I believe) was one of the paragraphs deemed nlost offen- 



" It appears that some of the 'Spartan Band,' headed by Michael Walsh, 
after a fight in the -ith District of the Sixth Ward, paraded up Centre street, 
opposite the Halls of Justice, to the neighborhood of the poll of the 3d Dis- 
trict, where, after marching and counter-marching, the leader Walsh re-com- 
menced the work of violence by knocking down an unoffending individual, who 
was following near him. This was the signal for a general attack of this band 
upon the Irish population, who were knocked down in every direction, until the 
street was literally strewed with their prostrate bodies. After this demonstra- 
tion of ' Spartan valor,' the Irish fled, and the band moved on to another poll 
to re-enact their deeds of violence. In the interim the Irish proceeded to rally 
their forces, and, armed with sticks of cord- wood and clubs, paraded through 
Centre street, about 300 strong, attacking indiscriminately and knocking down 
nearly all who came in their way — some of their victims, bruised and bloody, 
having to be carried into the Police Office and the prison, to protect them from 
being murdered. A portion of the Irish then dispersed, while another portion 
proceeded to a house in Orange street, which they attacked and riddled from 
top to bottom. Re-uniting their scattered forces, the Irish bands again, with 
increased numbers, marched up Centre street, driving all before them, and 
when near the Halls of Justice, the cry was raised, ' Americans, stand firm !' 
when a body of nearly a thousand voters surrounded the Irish bands, knocked 
them down, and beat them without mercy — while some of the fallen Irishmen 
were with difficulty rescued from the violence that would have destroyed 
them, had they not been hurried into the Police Office and prison as a place of 
refuge. In this encounter, or the one that preceded it, a man named Ford, 
and said t': be one of the ' Spartans,' was carried into the Police Ofl&ce beaten 
almost to death, and was subsequently transferred to the Hospital." 

On the morning of the day on which this appeared, two gentle- 
men, more muscular than civil, called at the office to say, that the 
Tribune's account of the riot was incorrect, and did injustice to 



THE OFFICE THREATENED. 185 

individuals, who expected to see a retraction on the following day. 
No retraction appeared on the following day, but, on fhe contrary, 
a fuller and more emphatic repetition of the charge. The next 
morning, the oflBce was favored by a second visit from the muscular 
gentlemen. One of them seized a clerk by the shoulder, and re- 
quested to be informed whether he was the offspring of a female 
dog who had put that into the paper, pointing to the offensive arti- 
cle. The clerk protested his innocence; and the men of muscle 
swore, that, whoever put it in, if the next paper did not do them jus- 
tice, the Bloody Sixth would come down and 'smash the office.' 
The Tribune of the next day contained a complete history of the 
riot, and denounced its promoters with more vehemence than on 
the days preceding. The Bloody Sixth was ascertained to be in a 
ferment, and the office prepared itself for defense. 

One of the compositors was a member of the City Guard, and 
through his interest, the muskets of that admired company of citi- 
zen soldiers were procured ; as soon as the evening shades pre- 
vailed, they were conveyed to the office, and distributed among 
the men. One of the muskets was placed near the desk of the Ed- 
itor, who looked up from his writing and said, he 'guessed they 
wouldn't come down,' and resumed his work. The foreman of the 
press-room in the basement caused a pipe to be conveyed from the 
safety valve of the boiler to the steps that led up to the sidewalk. 
The men in the Herald office, near by, made common cause, for 
this occasion only, with their foemen of the Tribune, and agreed, 
on the first alarm, to rush through the sky-light, to the flat roof, and 
rain down on the heads of the Bloody Sixth a shower of brick-bats 
to be procured from the surrounding chimneys. It was thought, 
that what with volleys of musketry from the upper windows, a 
storm of bricks from the roof, and a blast of hot steam from the 
cellar, the Bloody Sixth would soon have enough of smashing the 
Tribune office. The men of the allied offices waited for the expect- 
ed assault with the most eager desire. At twelve o'clock, the part- 
ners made a tour of inspection, and expressed their perfect satisfac- 
tion with all the arrangements. But, unfortunately for the story, 
the night wore away, the paper went to press, morning dawned, 
and yet the Bloody Sixth had not appeared ! Either the Bloody 
Sixth had thought better of it, or the men of muscle had ha<' no 



186 THE tribune's second year 

riglif, to speak in its awful name. From whatever cause — these 
masterly preparations were made in vain; and the Tribune went on 
its belligerent way, unsmashed. For some weeks, 'it kept at' the 
election frauds, and made a complete exposure of the guilty persons 

Let us glance hastily over the rest of the volume. 

It was the year of Charles Dickens' visit to the United States. 
The Tribune ridiculed the extravagant and unsuitable honors paid 
to the amiable novelist, but spoke strongly in favor of international 
copyright, which Mr. Dickens made it his ' mission ' to advocate. 
AVhen the 'American Notes for General Circulation' appeared, the 
Tribune was one of the few papers that gave it a 'favorable notice.' 
*' We have read the book," said the Tribune, "very carefully, and 
we are forced to say, in the face of all this stormy denunciation, 
that, so far as its tone toward this country is concerned, it is one 
of the nery lest works of its class we hate ever seen. There is not 
a sentence it which seems to have sprung from ill-nature or con- 
tempt; not a word of censure is uttered for its own sake or in 
a fault-finding spirit ; the whole is a calm, judicious, gentlemanly, 
unexceptionable record of what the writer saw — and a candid and 
correct judgment of its worth and its defects. How a writer could 
look upon the broadly-blazoned and applauded slanders of his own 
land which abound in this — how he could run through the pages of 
Lester's book — filled to the margin witli the grossest, most un- 
founded and illiberal assaults upon all the institutions and the social 
phases of Great Britain — and then write so calmly of this country, 
with so manifest a freedom from passion and prejudice, as Dick- 
Ens has done, is to us no slight marvel. That he has done it is 
infinitely to his credit, and confirms us in the opinion we had long 
since formed of the soundness of his head and the goodness of his 
heart." 

In the summer of 1842, Mr. Greeley made an extensive tour, visit- 
ing Washington, Mount Vernon, Poultney, Westhaven, London- 
derry, Niagara, and the home of his parents in Pennsylvania, from 
all of which he wrote letters to the Tribune. His letters from 
Washington, entitled ' Glances at the Senate,' gave agreeable 
sketches of Calhoun, Preston, Benton, Evans, Crittenden, Wright, 
and others. Silas Wright he thought the 'keenest logician m the 
Senate,' the 'Ajax o'. plausibility,' the 'Talleyrand of tba forum.' 



VISITS NIAGARA. 187 

Calhouu he descriled as the 'compactest speaker' in the Senate; 
Preston, as the 'most forcible declaimer;' Evans, as the 'most dex- 
terous and diligent legislator ;' Benton, as an individual, " gross and 
burly in person, of countenance most unintellectual, in manner pom- 
pous and inflated, in matter empty, in conceit a giant, in influence 
a cipher !" 

From Mount Yernon, Mr. Greeley wrote an interesting letter, 
chiefly descriptive. It concluded thus : — " Slowly, pensively, we 
turned our faces from the rest of the mighty dead to the turmoil of 
the restless living — from the solenm, sublime repose of Mount Ver- 
non to the ceaseless inirigues, the petty strifes, the ant-hill bustle of 
the Federal City. Each has its own atmosphere ; London and 
Mecca are not so unlike as they. The silent, enshrouding woods, 
the gleaming, majestic river, the bright, benignant sky — it is fitly 
here, amid the scenes he loved and hallowed, that the man whose 
life and character have redeemed Patriotism and Liberty from the 
reproach which centuries of designing knavery and hollow profess- 
ion nad cast upon them, now calmly awaits the trump of the arch- 
angel. Who does not rejoice that the original design of removing 
his ashes to the city has never been (consummated — that they lie 
where the pilgrim may reverently approach them, unvexed by the 
Mght laugh of the time-killing worldling, unannoyed by the vain or 
vile scribblings of the thoughtless or the base? Thus may they 
repose forever ! that the heart of the patriot may be invigorated, 
th« hopes of the philanthropist strengthened and his aims exalted, 
the pulse of the American quickened and his aspirations purified by 
a visit to Mount Vernon!" 

From Niagara, the traveller wrote a letter to Graham's Magazine : 

" Years," said he, * though not many, have weighed upon me since first, in 
boyhood, I gazed from the deck of a canal-boat upon the distant cloud of white 
vapor which marked the position of the world s great cataract, and listened to 
catch the rumbling of its deep thunders. Circumstances did not then permit m© 
to gratify my strong desire of visiting it ; and now, when I am tempted to won- 
der at the stolidity of those who live within a day's journey, yet live on 
through half a century without one glance at the mighty torrent, I am 
checked by the reflection that I myself passed within a dozen miles of it no 
less than five times before I was able to enjoy its magnificence. The propi- 
tious hour cam* at last, however ; and, after a disappointed gaze from the 



188 THE TRIBUNES SECOND TEAR. 

upper terrace on the British side, (in which I half feared that the sheet of 
broken and boiling water above was all the cataract that existed,) and rapid 
tortuous descent by the woody declivity, I stood at length on Table Rock, and 
the whole immensity of the tremendous avalanche of waters burst at once on 
my arrested vision, while awe struggled with amazement for the mastery of 
my soul. 

" This was late in October ; I have twice visited the scene amid the freshness 
and beauty of June ; but I think the late Autumn is by far the better season. 
There is then a sternness in the sky, a plaintive melancholy in the sighing of 
the wind through the mottled forest foliage, which harmonizes better with the 
spirit of the scene ; for the Genius of Niagara, friend ! is never a laughter- 
loving spirit. For the gaudy vanities, the petty pomps, the light follies of the 
hour, he has small sympathy. Let not the giddy heir bring here his ingots, 
the selfish aspirant his ambition, the libertine his victim, and hope to find 
enjoyment and gaiety in the presence. Let none come here to nurse his pride, 
or avarice, or any other low desire. God and His handiwork here stand forth 
in lone sublimity ; and all the petty doings and darings of the ants ».t the 
base of the pyramid appear in their proper insignificance. Few can have 
visited Niagara and left it no humbler, no graver than they came." 

On his return to the city, Horace Greeley subsided, with curious 
abruptness, into the editor of the Tribune. This note appears on 
the morning after his arrival : 

** The senior editor of this paper has returned to his post, after an absence 
of four weeks, during which he has visited nearly one half of the counties of 
this State, and passed through portions of Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachu- 
setts, etc. During this time he has written little for the Tribune save the 
casual and hasty letters to which his initials were subscribed ; but it need 
hardly be said that the general course and conduct of the paper have been the 
same as if he had been at his post. 

" Two deductions only from the observations he has made and the information 
he has gathered during his tour, will here be given. They are these : 

" 1. The cause of Protection to Home Industry is much stronger throughout 
this and the adjoining States than even the great party which mainly up- 
holds it; and nothing will so much tend to ensure the election of Henry Clay 
next President as the veto of an efficient Tariff bill by John Tyler. 

" 2. The strength of the Whig party is unbroken by recent disasters and 
treachery, and only needs the proper opportunity to manifest itself in all the 
energy and power of 1840. If a distinct and unequivocal issue can be made 
upon the great leading questions at issue between the rival parties — on Pro- 
tection to Home Industry and Internal Improvement — tl»e Whi^ ascendenc/ 
will be triumphantly vindicated in the coming electipn." 



A HARD HIT AT MAJOR NOAH. 189 

1 need not dwell on the politics of that year. For Protection- - 
for Clay— against Tyler — against his vetoes — for a law to punish se 
duction — against capital punishment — imagine countless columns. 

In October, died Dr. Channing. " Deeply," wrote Mr. Greeley, 
" do we deplore his loss, most untimely, to the faithless eye of man 
does it seem — to the cause of truth, of order and of right, and still 
more deeply do we lament that he has left behind him, in the same 
department of exertion, so few, in proportion to the number needed, 
to supply the loss occasioned by his death." Soon after, the Tri- 
bune gave Theodore Parker a hearing by publishing sketches of his 
lectures. 

An aflfair of a personal nature made considerable noise about this 
time, which is worth alluding to, for several reasons. Major Noah, 
then the editor of the ' Union,' a Tylerite paper of small circula- 
tion and irritable temper, was much addicted to attacks on the Tri- 
bune. On this occasion, he was unlucky enough to publish a ri- 
diculous story, to the effect that Horace Greeley had taken his 
breakfast in company with two colored men at a boarding-house in 
Barclay street. The story was eagerly copied by the enemies of the 
Tribune, and at length Horace Greeley condescended to notice it. 
The point of his most happy and annihilating reply is contained in 
these, its closing sentences: "We have never associated with 
blacks; never eaten with them ; and yet it is quite probable that if 
we had seen two cleanly, decent colored persons sitting down at a 
second table in another room just as we were finishing our break- 
fast, we might have gone away without thinking or caring about 
the matter. We choose our own company in all things, and that 
of our own race, but cherish little of that spirit which for eighteen 
centuries has held the kindred of M. M. Noah accursed of God and 
man, outlawed and outcast, and unfit to be the associates of Chris- 
tians, Mussulmen, or even self-respecting Pagans. Where there are 
thousands who would not eat with a negro, there are (or lately 
were) tens of thousands who would not eat with a Jew. We kave 
to such renegader as the Judge of Israel the stirring up of prejudices 
and the prating of ' usages of society,' which over half the world 
make him an abhorrence, as they not long since would have done 
here; we treat all men according to what they are and not 
whence they spring. That he is a knave, we think much to his dis- 



190 THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPEll. 

credit ; that he is a Jew nothing, however unfortunate it may be 
for that luckless people." This was a hit not more hard than faK 
The ' Judge of Israel,' it is said, felt it acutely. 

The Tribune continued to prosper. It ended the second volume 
with a circulation of twenty thousand, and an advertising patron- 
age so extensive as to compel the issue of frequent supplements. 
The position of its chief editor grew in importance. His advice and 
co-operation were sought by so many person? and for so many ob- 
jects, that h« was obliged to keep a notice standing, which request- 
ed " all who would see him personally in his office, to call between 
the hours of 8 and 9 A. M., and 5 and 6 P. M., unless the most im- 
perative necessity dictate a different hour. If this notice be dis- 
regarded, he will be compelled to abandon his office and seek else- 
where a chance for an hour's uninterrupted devotion to his daily 
duties." 

His first set lecture in New York is thus announced, January 
Sd, 1843 : " Horace Greeley will lecture before the New York Ly- 
ceum at the Tabernacle, this evening. Subject, ' Human Life.' The 
lecture will commence at half past 7, precisely. If those who care 
to bear it will sit near the desk, they will favor the lecturer's weak 
and husky voice." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

The libel— Horace Greeley'8 narrative of the trial— He reviews the opening speech of 
Mr. Cooper's cimnsel- A striking illustration— He addresses the jury— Mr. Cooper 
sums up — Horace Greeley comments on the speech of the novelist — In doing so ho 
perpetrates new libels— The verdict— Mr. Greeley's remarks on tho same- Strikes 
a bee-line for New York— A new suit— An imaginary case. 

A MAN is never so characteristic as when he sports. There was 
something in the warfare waged by the author of the Leatherstock- 
ing against the press, and particularly in his suit of the Tribune for 
libel, that appealed so strongly to Horace Greeley's sense of tb& 



THE LIBEL ON J. FENIMORE COOPER. 191 

comic, that he seldom alUided to it without, apparently, falling into 
a paroxysm of mirth. Some of his most humorous passages were 
written in connection with what he called ' the Cooperage of the 
Tribune.' To that affair, therefore, it is proper that a short chapter 
should be devoted, before pursuing further the History of the 
Tribune. 

The matter alleged to be libelous appeared in the Tribune, Nov. 
17th, 1841. The trial took place at Saratoga, Dec. 9th, 1842. Mr. 
Greeley defended the suit in person, and, on returning to New York, 
wrote a long and ludicrous account of the trial, which occupied 
eleven columns and a quarter in the Tribune of Dec. 12th. For 
that number of the paper there was such a demand, that the ac- 
count of the trial was, soon after, re-published in a pamphlet, of 
which this chapter will be little more than a condensation. 

The libel — such as it was — the reader may find lurking in the 
following epistle : 

« MR. FENIMORB COOPER AND HIS LIBELS. 

"Fonda, Nov. 17, 1841. 
'' To THE Editor of the Tribujte : — 

" The Circuit Court now sitting here is to be occupied chiefly with the legal 
griefs of Mr. Fenimore Cooper, who has determined to avenge himself upoa 
the Press for having contributed by its criticisms to his waning popularity as 
a novelist. 

" The ' handsome Mr. Effingham' has three cases of issue here, two of which 
are against Col. Webb, Editor of the Courier and Enquirer, and one against 
Mr. Weed, Editor of the Albany Evening Journal. 

" Mr. Weed not appearing on Monday, (the first day of court,) Cooper mov- 
ed for judgment by default, as Mr. Weed's counsel had not arrived. Col. 
Webb, who on passing through Albany, called at Mr. Weed's house, and 
learned that his wife was seriously and his daughter dangerously ill, request- 
ed Mr. Sacia to state the facts to the Court, and ask a day's delay, Mr. Sacia 
made, at the same time, an appeal to Mr. Cooper's humanity. But that appeal, 
of course, was an unavailing one. The novelist pushed his advantage. The 
Court, however, ordered the cause to go over till the next day, with the un- 
derstanding that the default should be entered then if Mr. Weed did not ap- 
pear. Col. Webb then despatched a messenger to Mr. Weed with this infor- 
mation. The messenger returned with a letter from Mr. Weed, stating that 
his daughter lay very ill, and that he would not leave her while she was suf 
fering or in danger Mr. Cooper, therefore, immediately moved for his default. 
Mr. Sacia interposed again for time, but it was denied. A jury was empan- 



192 



THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPER. 



eled to assess Mr. Effingham's damages. The trial, of course, was ex-parte, 
Mr. Weed being absent and defenceless. Cooper's lawyer made a wordy, 
windy, abusive appeal for exemplary damages. The jury retired, under a 
Btrong charge against Mr. Weed from Judge Willard, and after remaining in 
their room till twelve o'clock at night, sealed a verdict for $400 for Mr. Effing- 
ham, which was delivered to the Court this morning. 

" This meager verdict, under the circumstanses, is a severe and mortifying 
rebuke to Cooper, who had everything his own way. 

" The value of Mr. Cooper's character, therefore, has been judicially ascer- 
tained. 

" It is worth exactly four hundred dollars. 

" Col. Webb's trial comes on this afternoon ; his counsel, A. L. Jordan, Esq., 
having just arrived in the up train. Cooper will be blown sky high. This 
experiment upon the Editor of the Courier and Enquirer, I predict, will cure 
the ' handsome Mr. Effingham' of his monomania for libels." 

The rest of the story shall be given here in Mr. Greeley's own 
words. He begins the narrative thus : — 

" The responsible Editor of the Tribune returned yesterday morning from a 
week's journey to and sojourn in the County of Saratoga, having been thereto 
urgently persuaded by a Supreme Court writ, requiring him to answer to the 
declaration of Mr. J. Fenimore Cooper in an action for Libel. 

" This suit was originally to have been tried at the May Circuit at Ballston ; 
but neither Fenimore (who was then engaged in the Coopering of Col. Stone 
of the Commercial) nor we had time to attend to it — so it went over to this 
term, which opened at Ballston Spa tn Monday, Dec. 5th. We arrived on 
the ground at eleven o'clock of that day, and found the plaintifif and his 
lawyers ready for us, our case No. 10 oa thu calendar, and of course a good 
prospect of an early trial ; but an important case involving Water-rights came 
in ahead of us (No. 8) taking two days, and it was half-past 10, A.M., of 
Friday, before ours was reached — very fortunately for us, as we had no lawyer, 
had never talked over the case with one, or made any preparation whatever, 
save in thought, and had not even found time to read the papers pertaining 
to it till we arrived at Ballston. 

" The delay in reaching the case gave us time for all ; and that we did not 
employ lawyers to aid in our conduct or defense proceeded from no want of 
confidence in or deference to the many eminent members of the Bar there in 
attendance, beside Mr. Cooper's three able counsel, but simply from the fact 
that we wished to present to the Court some considerations which we thought 
had been overlooked >r overborne in the recent Trials of the Press for Libel 
before our Supreme and Circuit Courts, and which, since they appealed more 
directly and forcibly to the experience of Editors than of Lawyers, we pre- 



THE OPENING SPEECH OF MR COOPEr's COUNSEL. 193 

Burned an ordinary editor might present as plainly and fully as an able law- 
yer. "We wished to place before the Court and the country those views which 
we understand the Press to maintain with us of its own position, duties, 
responsibilities, and rights, as affected by the practical construction given of 
late years in this State to the Law of Libel, and its application to editors and 
journals. Understanding that we could not appear both in person and by 
counsel, we chose the former ; though on trial we found our opponent was per- 
mitted to do what we supposed we could not. So much by way of explana- 
tion to the many able and worthy lawyers ia attendance on the Circuit, from 
whom we received every kindness, who would doubtless have aided us most 
oheerfully if we had required it, and would have conducted our case far more 
skillfully than we either expected or cared to do. We had not appeared there 
to be saved from a verdict by any nice technicality or legal subtlety. 

" The case was opened to the Court and Jury by Richard Cooper, nephew 
and attorney of the plaintiff, iu a speech of decided pertinence and force. 
* * * Mr. R. Cooper has had much experience in this class of cases, and 
is a young man of considerable talent. Ilis manner is the only fault about 
him, being too elaborate and pompous, and his diction too bombastic to pro- 
duce the best effect on an unsophisticated auditory. If he will only contrive 
to correct this, he will yet make a figure at the Bar — or rather, he will make 
less figure and do more execution. The force of his speech was marred by 
Feniraore's continually interrupting to dictate and suggest to him ideas when 
he would have done much better if left alone. For instance : Fenimore in- 
structed him to say, that our letter from Fonda above recited purported to be 
from the 'correspondent of the Tribune,' and thence to draw and press on the 
Jury the inference that the letter was written by some of our own corps, whom 
we had sent to Fonda to report these trials. This inference we were obliged 
to repel in our reply, by showing that the article plainly real ' correspondence 
of the Tribune,' just as when a fire, a storm, or some other notable event 
occurs in any part of the country or world, and a friend who happens to be 
there, sits down and dispatches us a letter by the first mail to give us early 
advices, though he has no connection with us but by subscription and good 
will, and perhaps never wrote a line to us in his life till now. 

********* 

"The next step in Mr. R. Cooper's opening: We had, to the Declaration 
ag^ainst us, pleaded the General Issue — that is Not Guilty of libeling Mr. 
Cooper, at the same time fully admitting that we had published all that he 
called our libels on him, and desiring to put in issue only the fact of their 
being or not being libels, and have the verdict turn on that issue. But Mr. 
Cooper told the Jury (and we found, to our cost, that this was New York Su- 
preme and Circuit Court law) that by pleading Not Guilty ice had legally ad- 
mitted ourselves to be Guilty — that all that was necessary for the plaintiff 
under that plea was to put in our admission of publication, and then the Jur^ 
13 



194 THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPEU. 

• 
had nothing to do but to assess the plaintifiTs damages under the direction of 
the Court. In short, we were made to understand that there was no way un- 
der Heaven — we beg pardon; under New York Supreme Court Law — in which 
the editor of a newspaper could plead to an action for libel that the matter 
charged upon him as libelous was not in its nature or intent a libel, but sim- 
ply a statement, according to the best of his knowledge and belief, of some 
notorious and every way public transaction, (r his own honest comments 
thereon; and ask the Jury to decide whether tl.e plaintiff's averment or hia 
answers thereto be the truth! To illustrate the beauties of 'the perfection 
of human reason ' — always intending New York Circuit and Supreme Court 
reason — on this subject, and to show the perfect soundness and pertinence of 
Mr. Cooper's logic according to the decisions of these Courts, we will give an 
example . 

" Our police reporter, say this evening, shall bring in on his chronicle of 
daily occurrences the following : 

*• ' A hatchet-faced chap, with mouse-colored whiskers, who gave the name 
of John Smith, was brought in by a watchman who found him lying drunk in 
the gutter. After a suitable admonition from the Justice, and on payment of 
the usual fine, he was discharged.' 

" Now, our reporter, who, no more than we, ever before heard of this John 
Smith, is only ambitious to do his duty correctly and thoroughly, to make his de- 
scription accurate and graphic, and perhaps to protect better men who rejoice 
in the cognomen of John Smith, from being confounded with this one in the 
popular rumor of his misadventure. If the paragraph should come under 
our notice, we should probably strike it out altogether, as relating to a subject 
of no public moment, and likely to crowd out better matter. But we do not 
see it, and in it goes : Well : John Smith, who ' acknowledges the corn ' as to 
being accidentally drunk and getting into the watch-house, is not willing to 
rest under the imputation of being hatched-faced and having mouse-colored 
whiskers, retains Mr. Richard Cooper — for he could not do better — and com- 
mences an action for libel against us. We take the best legal advice, and are 
told that we must demur to the Declaration — that is, go before a court without 
jury, where no facts can be shown, and maintain that the matter charged as 
uttered by us is not libelous. But Mr. R. Cooper meets us there and says justly : 
' How is the court to decide without evidence that this matter is not libelous? 
If it was written and inserted for the express purpose of ridiculing and bring- 
ing into contempt my client, it clearly is libelous. And then as to damages : 
My client is neither rich nor a great man, but his character, in his own circl%, 
is both dear and valuable to him. We shall be able to show on trial that he 
was on the point of contracting marriage with the daughter of the keeper of 
the most fashionable and lucrative oyster-cellar in Orange street, whose 
nerves were so shocked at the idea of her intended having a ' hatchet face and 
mouse-colored whiskers,' that she fainted outright on reading the paragraph 



THE OPENING SPEECH OF MR. COOPEr's COUNSEL. 195 

(copied from your paper into the next day's 'Sun'), and was not brought to 
until a whole bucket of oysters which she had just opened had been poured 
over her in a hurried mistake for water. Since then, she has frequent relapses 
and shuddering, especially when my client's name is mentioned, and utterly 
refuses to see or speak of him. The match is dead broke, and my client loses 
thereby a capital home, where yictuals are more plentiful and the supply more 
steady than it has been his fortune to find them for the last year or two. He 
loses, with all this, a prospective interest in the concern, and is left utterly 
without business or means of support except this suit. Besides, how can you 
tell, in the absence of all testimony, that the editor was not paid to insert this 
villanous description of my client, by some envious rival for the affections of 
the oyster-maid, who calculates both to gratify his spite and advance his lately 
hopeless wooing ? In that case, it certainly is a libel. We affirm this to be 
the case, and you are bound to presume that it is. The demurrer must be 
overruled.' And so it must be. No judge could decide otherwise. 

" Now we are thrown back upon a dilemma : Either we must plead Justifica- 
tion, in which case toe admit that our publication was on its face a libel ; and 
now, woe to us if we cannot prove Mr. Cooper's client's face as sharp, and his 
whiskers of the precise color as stated. A shade more or less ruins us. For, be 
it known, by attempting a Justification we have not merely admitted our of- 
fense to be a libel, but our plea is an aggravation of the libel, and entitles the 
plaintiff to recover higher and more exemplary damages. But we have just 
one chance more : to plead the general issue — to wit, that we did not libel the 
said John Smith, and go into court prepared to show that we had no malice 
toward or intent to injure Mr. Smith, never heard of him before, and have done 
all we knew how to make him reparation — in short, that we have done and in- 
tended nothing which brings us fairly within the iron grasp of the law of libel. 
But here again, while trying our best to get in somehow a plea of Not Guilty, 
we have actually pleaded Guilty ! — so says the Supreme Court law of New 
York — our admitted publication (no matter of what) concerning John Smith 
proves irresistibly that we have libeled him — we are not entitled in any way 
whatever to go to the Jury with evidence tending to show that our publication 
is not a libel — or, in overthrow of the legal presumption-oi malice, to show 
that there actually was none. All that we possibly can offer must be taken 
into account merely in mitigation of damages. Our hide is on the fence, you 
see, any how. 

" But to return to Richard's argument-at Ballston. He put very strongly 
against us the fact that our Fonda correspondent (see Declaration above) con- 
sidered Fenimore's verdict there a meager one. ' Gentlemen of the jury,' said 
ne, ' see how these editors rejoice and exult when they get off with so light a 
verdict as $400 ! They consider it a triumph over the law and the defendant 
They don't consider that amount anything. If you mean to vindicate the law.o 
and the character of my client, you see yo» must give much more than this.' 



196 THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

This was a good point, but not quite fair. The exultation over the ' meager 
verdi3t' was expressly in view of the fact, that the cause was undefended — that 
Fenimore and his counsel had it all their own way, evidence, argument, charge, 
and all. Still, Richard had a good chance here to appeal for a large verdict, 
and he did it well. 

" On one other point Richard talked more like a cheap lawyer and less like 
a — like what we had expected of him — than through the general course of his 
argument. In his pleadings, he had set forth Horace Greeley and Thomas Mc- 
Elrath as Editors and Proprietors of the Tribune, and we readily enough ad- 
mitted whatever he chose to assert about us except the essential thing in dis 
pute between us. TTell, on the strength of this he puts it to the Court and 
Jury, that Thomas McElrath is one of the Editors of the Tribune, and that 
be, being (having been) a lawyer, would have been in Court to defend this 
suit, if there was any valid defens-e to be made. This, of course, went very 
hard against us ; and it was to no purpose that we informed him that Thomas 
McElrath, though legally implicated in it, had nothing to do practically with 
this matter — (all which he knew very well long before) — and that the other 
defendant is the man who does whatever libeling is done in the Tribune, and 
holds himself everywhere responsible for it. We presume there is not much 
doubt even so far off as Cooperstown as to who edits the Tribune, and who 
wrote the editorial about the Fonda business. (In point of fact, the real and 
palpable defendant in this suit never even conversed with his partner a quar- 
ter of an hour altogether about this subject, considering it entirely his own 
job ; and the plaintiff himself, in conversation with Mr. McElrath, in the pres- 
ence of his attorney, had fully exonerated Mr. M. from anything more than 
legal liability.) But Richard was on his legs as a lawyer — he pointed to the 
seal on his bond — and therefore insisted that Thomas McElrath was art and 
part in the alleged libel, not only legally, but actually, and would have been 
present to respond to it if he had deemed it susceptible of defense ! As a 
lawyer, we suppose this was right ; but, as an Editor and a man, we could not 
have done it." 

' Kichard' gave way, and ' Horace' addressed the jury in a speech 
of fifty minutes, which need not he inserted here, because all its 
leading ideas are contained in the narrative. It was a convincing 
argument, so fur as the reason and justice of the case were concern- 
ed ; and, in any court where reason and justice bore sway, would 
have gained the case. " Should you find, gentleman," concluded 
Mr. Greeley, "that I had no right to express an opinion as to the 
honor and magnanimity of Mr. Cooper, in pushing his case to a trial 
as related, you will of course compel me to pay whatever damage 
has been done to his character by such expression, followed and ac 



MR. COOPER SUMS UP. 197 

sompanied by his own statement of the whole matter. I will not 
predict your estimate, gentlemen, but I may express my profound 
conviction that no opinion which Mr. Cooper might choose to express 
of any act of my life — no construction he could put upon my con- 
duct or motives, could possibly damage me to an extent which 
would entitle or incline me to ask damages at your hands. 

" But, gentlemen, you are bound to consider — you cannot refuse 
to consider, that if you condemn me to pay any sum whatever for 
this expression of my opinions on his conduct, you thereby seal your 
own lips, with those of your neighbors and countrymen, against any 
such expression in this or any other case ; you will no longer have 
a right to censure the rich man who harasses his poor neighbor with 
vexatious lawsuits merely to oppress and ruin him, but will be lia- 
ble by your own verdict to prosecution and damages whenever you 
shall feel constrained to condemn what appears to you injustice, op- 
pression, or littleness, no matter how flagrant the case may be. 

" Gentlemen of the Jury, ray character, my reputation are in your 
hands. I think I may say that I commit them to your keeping un- 
tarnished ; I will not doubt that you will return them to me unsul- 
lied. I ask of you no mercy, but justice. I have not sought this 
usue ; but neither have I feared nor shunned it. Should you render 
the verdict against me, I shall deplore far more than any pecuniary 
consequence the stigma of libeler which your verdict would tend to 
cast upon me — an imputation which I was never, till now, called to 
repel before a jury of my countrymen. But, gentlemen, feeling no 
consciousness of desei'ving such a stigma — feeling, at this moment, 
as ever, a profound conviction that I do not deserve it, I shall yet 
be consoled by the reflection that many nobler and worthier than I 
have suffered far more than any judgment here could inflict on me 
for the Rights of Free Speech and Opinion — the right of rebuking 
oppression and meanness in the language of manly sincerity and 
honest feeling. By their example, may I still be upheld and 
strengthened. Gentlemen, I fearlessly await your decision I" 

Mr. Greeley resumes his narrative : 

" Mr. J. Feuimore Cooper summed up in person the cause for the prosecution, 
He commenced by giving at length the reasons which had induced him to 
bring this suit in Saratoga. The last and only one that made any impression 



198 THE TRIBTINE AND J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

on our mind was this, that he had heard a great deal of good of the people of 
Saratoga, and wished to form a better acquaintance with them. (Of course 
this desire was very flattering ; but we hope the Saratogans won't feel too 
proud to speak to common folks hereafter, for we want liberty to go there again 
next summer.) 

" Mr. Cooper now walked into the Public Press and its aJeged abuses, arro- 
gant pretensions, its interference in this case, probable motives, etc., but the 
public are already aware of his sentiments respecting the Press, and would 
not thank us to recapitulate them. His stories of editors publishing truth and 
falsehood with equal relish may have foundation in individual cases, but cer- 
tainly none in general practice. No class of men spend a tenth part so much 
time or money in endeavoring to procure the earliest and best information 
from all quarters, as it is their duty to do. Occasionally an erroneous or ut- 
terly false statement gets into print and is copied — for editors cannot intuitive- 
ly separate all truth from falsehood — but the evil arises mainly from the cir- 
cumstance that others than editors are often the spectators of events demand- 
ing publicity ; since we cannot tell where the next man is to be killed, or the 
next storm rage, or the next important cause to be tried : if we had the 
power of prophecy, it would then be time to invent some steam-lightning 
balloon, and have a reporter ready on the spot the moment before any notable 
event should occur. This would do it ; but now we luckless editors must too 
often depend on the observation and reports of those who are less observant, 
less careful, possibly in some cases less sagacious, than those of our own tribe. 
Our limitations are not unlike those of Mr. Weller, Junior, as stated while 
under cross-examination in the case of Bardell vs. Pickwick : 

" ' Yes. I have eyes,' replied Sam, * and that's just it. If they was a pair 
of patent double million magnifyin' gas microscopes of hextra power, p'raps 
I might be able to see through a flight of stairs and a deal door, but bein' 
only eyes, you see, my wision's limited.' 

" Fenimore proceeded to consider our defense, which he used up in five min- 
utes, by pronouncing it no defence at all ! It had nothing to do with the mat- 
ter in issue whatever, and we must be very green if we meant to be serious 
in offering it. (We were rather green in Supreme Court libel law, that's a 
fact; but we were put to school soon after, and have already run up quite a 
little bill for tuition, which is one sign of progress.) His Honor the Judge 
would tell the Jury that our law was no law whatever, or had nothing to do 
with this ease. (So he did— Cooper was right here.) In short, our speech 
could not have been meant to apply to this case, but was probably the scrap- 
ings of our editorial closet — mere odds and ends — what the editors call ' Ba- 
laam.' Here followed a historical digression, concerning what editors call 
' Balaam,' which, as it was intended tojllustrate the irrelevancy of our whole 
argument, we thought very pertinent. It wound up with what was meant foi 
a joke about Balaam and his ass, which of course was a good thing ; but its 



MR. COOPER SUMS UP. 199 

point wholly escaped us, and we believe the auditors were equally unfortunate. 
However, the wag himself appreciated and enjoyed it. 

" There were several other jokes (we suppose they were) uttered in the course 
of this lively speech, but we did n't get into their merits, (probably not being 
in the best humor for joking;) but one we remembered because it was really 
good, and came down to our comprehension. Fenimore was replying to our 
remarks about the ' handsome Mr. Efl&ngham,' (see speech,) when he observed 
that if we sJwuld sue him for libel in ' pronouncing us not handsome, he should 
not plead the General Issue, but Justify.' That was a neat hit, and well 
planted. We can tell him, however, that if the Court should rule as hard 
against him as it does against editors when they undertake to justify, he would 
find it difficult to get in the testimony to establish a matter even so plain as 
our plainness. 

" Fenimore now took up the Fonda libel suit, and fought the whole battle 
over again, from beginning to end. Now we had scarcely touched on this, sup- 
posing that, since we did not justify, we could only refer to the .statements 
contained in the publications put in issue between us, and that the Judge 
would check us, if we went beyond these. Fenimore, however, had no trou- 
ble ; said whatever he pleased — much of which would have been very perti- 
nent if he, instead of we, had been on trial — showed that he did not believe 
anything of Mr. Weed's family being sick at the time of the Fonda Trials, 
why he did not, &c., &c. We thought he might have reserved a^ll this till we 
got down to dinner, which everybody was now hungry for, and where it would 
have been more in place than addressed to the Jury. 

"Knowing what we positively did and do of the severe illness of the wife 
of Mr. Weed, and the dangerous state of his eldest daughter at the time of the 
Fonda Trials in question — regarding them as we do — the jokes attempted to 
be cut by Fenimore over their condition — his talk of the story growing up 
from one girl to the mother and three or four daughters — his fun about their 
probably having the Asiatic cholera among them or some other contagious 
disease, &c., &o., however it may have sounded to others, did seem to us 

rather inhu Hallo there ! we had like to have put our foot right into it 

again, after all our tuition. We mean to say, considering that, just the day 
before, Mr. Weed had been choked by his counsel into surrendering at dis- 
cretion to Fenimore, being assured (correctly) by said counsel that, as the law 
is now expounded and administered by the Supreme Court, he had no earthly 
choice but to bow his neck to the yoke, pay all that might be claimed of him 
and publish whatever humiliations should be required, or else prepare to be 
immediately ruined by the suits which Fenimore and Richard had already 
commenced or were getting ready for him — considering all this, and how much 
Mr. Weed has paid and must pay towards his subsistence — how keenly W. has 
had to smart for speaking his mind of him — we did not think that Feni- 
more's talk at this time and place of Weed's family, and of Weed himself as 



200 THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

a man so paltry that he woulJ pretend sickness in his family as an excuse tc 
buep away from Court, and resort to trick after trick to put oflf his case for a 
day or two — it seemed to us, considering the present relations of the partieS; 

most ungen There we go again ! "We mean to say that the whole of this 

part of Mr. Cooper's speech grated upon our feelings rather harshly. We be- 
lieve that isn't a libel. (This talking with a gag in the mouth is rather awk- 
ward at first, but we '11 get the hang of it in time. Have patience with us, 
Fenimore on one side and the Public on the other, till we nick it.) 

********* 

" Personally, Fenimore treated us pretty well on this trial — let us thank 
him for that — and so much the more that he did it quite at the expense of his 
consistency and his logic. For, after stating plumply that he considered ua 
the best of the whole Press-gang he had been fighting with, he yet w^nt on to 
argue that all we had done and attempted with the intent of rendering him strict 
justice, had been in aggravation of our original trespass ! Yes, there he stood, 
saying one moment that we were, on the whole, rather a clever fellow, and 
every other arguing that we had done nothing but to injure him wantonly and 
maliciously at first, and then all in our power to aggravate that injury ! 
(What a set the rest of us must be !) 

" And here is where he hit us hard for the first time. He had talked over 
an hour without gaining, as we could perceive, an inch of ground. When his 
compliment was put in, we supposed he was going on to say he was satisfied 
with our explanation of the matter and ooir intentions to do him justice, and 
would now throw up the case. But instead of this he took a sheer the other 
way, and came down upon us with the assertion that our publishing his state- 
ment of the Fonda business with our comments, was an aggravation of our 
original offense — was in effect adding insult to injury ! 

* * * * * * * 

*' There was a little point made by the prosecution which seemed to us too 
little. Our Fonda letter had averred that Cooper had three libel-suits coming 
off there at that Circuit — two against Webb, one against Weed. Richard and 
Fenimore argued that this was a lie — the one against Weed was all. The 
nicety of the distinction here taken will be appreciated when we explain that 
the suits against Webb were indictments for libels on J. Fenimore Cooper ! 

" We supposed that Fenimore would pile up the law against us, but were 
disappointed. He merely cited the last case decided against an Editor by the 
Supreme Court of this State. Of course, it was very fierce against Editors 
and their libels, but did not strike us as at all meeting the issue we had 
raised, or covering the grounds on which this case ought to have been decided. 

'* Fenimore closed very effectively with an appeal for his character, and a 
picture of the sufferings of his wife and family — his grown-up daughters often 
Buffused in tears by these attacks on their father. Some said this was mawk- 
ish, but we consider it good, and think it told. We have a different thpory as 



THE VERDICT. 201 

to what the girls were crying for, but we won't state it lest another dose of 
Supreme Court law be administered to us. (' Not any more at present, I 
thank ye.') 

" Fenimore closed something before two o'clock, having spoken over an hour 
and a half. If he had not wasted so much time in promising to make but a 
short speech and to close directly, he could have got through considerably 
sooner. Then he did wrong to Richard by continually recurring to and ful- 
some eulogiums on the argument of 'my learned kinsman.' Richard had 
made a good speech and an effective one — no mistake about it — and Fenimore 
must mar it first by needless, provoking interruptions, and then by praises 
which, though deserved, were horribly out of place and out of taste. Feni- 
more, my friend, you and I had better abandon the Bar — we are not likely 
either of us to cut much of a figure there. Let us quit before we make our- 
selves ridiculous. 

"His Honor Judge Willard occupied a brief half hour in charging the 
Jury. We could not decently appear occupied in taking down this Charge, 
and no one else did it — so we must speak of it with great circumspection. That 
he would go dead against us on the Law of the case we knew right well, from 
his decisions and charges on similar trials before. Not having his Law points 
before us, w« shall not venture to speak of them. SuflSce it to say, that 
they were New York Supreme and Circuit Court Law — no better and no worse 
than he has measured off to several editorial culprits before us. They are 
the settled ma.^ims of the Supreme Court of this State in regard to the law 
of libel as applied to Editors and Newspapers, and we must have been a goose 
to expect any better than had been served out to our betters. The Judge 
was hardly, if at all, at liberty to know or tolerate any other. 

******* 

"But we have filled our paper, and must close. The Judge charged very 
hard against us on the facts of the case, as calling for a pretty sizable verdict — 
our legal guilt had of course been settled long before in the Supreme Court. 

"When the Charge commenced, we would not have given Fenimore the 
first red cent for his verdict ; when it closed, we understood that we were 
booked to suffer some. If the Jury had returned a verdict in our favor, 
the Judge must have been constrained by his charge to set it aside, as 
contrary to law. 

" The Jury retired about half-past two, and the rest of us went to dinner. 
The Jury were hungry too, and did not stay out long. On comparing notes, 
there were seven of them for a verdict of $100, two for $200, and three for 
$500. They added these sums up— total $2,600— divided by 12, and the 
dividend was a little over $200 ; so they called it $200 damages and six 
cents costs, which of course carries fall costs against us. We went back 
from dinner, took the verdict in all meekness, took a sleigh, and struck a 
bee-line for New York." 



202 THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMCRE COOPER. 

"Thus for the Tribune the rub-a-dub is over ; the adze we trust laid aside , 
the staves all in their places ; the hoops tightly driven ; and the heading not 
paideularly out of order. Nothing remains but to pay piper, or cooper, or 
whatever ; and that shall be promptly attended to. 

•' Yes, Fenimore shall have his $200. To be sure, we don't exactly see how 
we came to owe him that sum ; but he has won it, and shall be paid. ' The 
court awards it, and the law doth give it.' We should like to meet him and 
have a social chat over the whole business, now it is over. There has been a 
good deal of fun in it, come to look back ; and if he has as little ill-will to- 
ward us as we bear to him, there shall never be another hard thought between 
us. We don't blame him a bit for the whole matter ; he thought we injured 
him, sued us, and got his pay. Since the Jury have cut down his little bill 
from $3,000 to $200, we won't higgle a bit about the balance, but pay it on 
sight. In fact, we rather like the idea of being so munificent a patron (for 
our means) of American Literature ; and are glad to do anything for one of 
the most creditable (of old) of our authors, who are now generally reduced to 
any shift for a living by that grand National rascality and greater folly, the 
denial of International Copyright. ('My pensive public,' don't flatter yourself 
that we are to be rendered mealy-mouthed toward you by our buffeting. We 
shall put it to your iniquities just as straight as a loon's leg, calling a spade 
a spade, and not an oblong garden implement, until the judicial construction 
of the law of libel shall take another hitch, and its penalties be invoked to 
shield communities as well as individuals from censure for their transgressions 
Till then, keep a bright look out !) 

" And Richard, too, shall have his share of ' the spoils of victory.' He has 
earned them fairly, and, in the main, like a gentleman — making us no need- 
less trouble, and we presume no needless expense. All was fair and above 
board, save some little specks in his opening of the case, which we noticed 
some hours ago, and have long since forgiven. For the rest, we rather like 
what we have seen of him ; and if anybody has any law business in Otsego, or 
any libel suits to prosecute anywhere, we heartily recommend Richard to do 
the work, warranting the client to be handsomely taken in and done for 
throughout. (There 's a puff", now, a man may be proud of. We don't give 
such every day out of pure kindness. It was Fenimore, we believe, that said 
on the trial, that our word went a great way in this country.) Can we say a 
good word for you, gallant foeman 7 We '11 praise any thing of yours we 
have read except the Monikins. 

" But sadder thoughts rush in on us in closing. Our case is well enough, 
or of no moment ; but we cannot resist the conviction that by the result of 
these Cooper libel- suits, and by the Judicial constructions which produce that 
result, the Liberty of the Press — its proper influence and respectability, its 
power to rebuke wrong and to exert a salutary influence upon the Public Mor' 
als is fearfully impaired We do not see how any paper can exist, and speak 



A NEW SUIT. 203 

and act worthily and usefully in this State, without subjecting itself daily to 
innumerable, unjust and crushing prosecutions and indictments for libel. 
Even if Juries could have nerves of iron to say and do what they really think 
right between man and man, the costs of such prosecution would ruin any 
journal. But the Liberty of the Press has often been compelled to appeal 
from the bench to the people. It will do so now, and we will nut doubt with 
success. Let not, then, the wrong-doer who is cunning enough to keep the 
blind side of the law, the swindling banker who has spirited away the means 
of the widow and orphan, the libertine who has dragg:ed a fresh victim to his 
lair, imagine that they are permanently shielded, by this misapplication of 
the law of libel, from fearless exposure to public scrutiny and indignation by 
the eagle gaze of an unfettered Press. Clouds and darkness may for the 
moment rest upon it, but they cannot, in the nature of things, endure. In 
the very gloom of its present humiliation we read the prediction of its speedy 
and certain restoration to its rights and its true dignit}-^ — to a sphere not of 
legal sufferance merely, but of admitted usefulness and honor." 

This narrative, which came within three-quarters of a column ot 
filling the entire inside of the Tribune, and must have covered fifty 
pages of foolscap, was written at the rate of about a column aa 
hour. It set the town laughing, elicited favorable notices from more 
than two hundred papers, and provoked the novelist to new anger, 
and another suit ; in which the damages were laid at three thousand 
dollars. " We have a lively trust, however," said the offending edi- 
tor, "that we sliall convince the jury that we do not owe him the 
first red cent of it." This is one paragraph of the new complaint : 

" And the said plaintiff further says and avers that the syllables inhu, fol- 
lowed by a dash, when they occur in the publication hereinafter set forth, as 

follows, to wit, inhu , were meant and intended by the said defendants for 

the word inhuman, and that the said defendants, in using the aforesaid sylla- 
bles, followed by a dash as aforesaid, in connection with the context, intended 
to convey, a»d did convey, the idea that the said plaintiff, on the occasion re- 
ferred to in that part of said publication, had acted in an inhuman manner. 
And the said plaintiff also avers that the syllable ungen, followed oy a dash, 

as follows, to wit, ungen , when they occur in the publication hereinafter 

set forth, were meant and intended by the said defendants either for the word 
ungenerous or the word ungentlemanly, and that the said defendants, in using 
the syllables last aforesaid, followed by a dash as aforesaid, in connection with 
the context, intended to convey, and did convey, the idea that the said plain- 
tiff, on the occasi(>n referred to in that part of said publication, had acted 



204 THE TRIBUNE AND J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

either in a most ungenerous or a most ungentlemanly manner, to wit, at the 
place and in the county aforesaid." 

In an article commenting upon the writ, the editor, after repel- 
ling the charge, that his account of the trial was 'replete with 
errors of fact,' pointedly addressed his distinguished adversary thus : 

"But, Fenimore, c?o hear reason a minute. This whole business is ridicu 
lous. If you would siviply sue those of the Press-gang who displease you, it 
would not be so bad ; but you sue and write too, which is not the fair thing. 
What use in belittling the profession of Literature by appealing from ita 
courts to those of Law 7 We ought to litigate upward, not down. Now, Fen- 
imore, you push a very good quill of your own except when you attempt to 
be funny — there you break down. But in the way of cutting and slashing you 
are No. one, and you don't seem averse to it either. Then why not settle 
this diflference at the point of the pen 7 We hereby tender you a column a 
day of The Tribune for ten days, promising to publish verbatim whatever you 
may write and put your name to — and to publish it in both our daily and 
weekly papers. You may give your view of the whole controversy between 
yourself and the Press, tell your story of the Ballston Trial, and cut us up to 
your heart's content. We will further agree not to write over two columns in 
reply to the whole. Now why is not this better than invoking the aid of John 
Doe and Richard Roe (no offense to Judge W. and your ' learned kinsman !') 
in the premises 7 Be wise, now, most chivalrous antagonist, and don't detract 
from the dignity of your profession !" 

Mr. Cooper, we may infer, became wise ; for the suit never came 
to trial ; nor did he accept the Tribune's offer of a column a day 
for ten days. For one more editorial article on the subject room 
must be afforded, and with that, our chapter on the Cooperage of 
the Tribune may have an end. 

"Our friend Fenimore Cooper, it will be remembered, chivalrously declared, 
in his summing up at Ballston, that if we were to sue him for a libel in assert- 
ing our personal uncomeliness, he should nc t plead the General Issue, but 
Justify. To a plain man, this would seem an easy and safe course. But let 
us try it : Fenimore has the audacity to say we are not handsome ; we employ 
Richard — we presume he has no aversion to a good fea even if made of the 
Editorial 'sixpences' Fenimore dilated on — and commence our action, laying 
the venue in St. Lawrence, Alleghany, or some other county where our personal 
appearance is not notorious ; and, if the Judge should be a friend of ours, so 
much the better. Well: Fenimore boldly pleads Justification, thinking it as 
easy as not. But how is he to establish it'^ We of course should not be sc 



AN IMAGINARY CASE. 205 

green as to attend the Trial in person on such an issue — no man is obliged to 
make out his adversary's case — but would leave it all to Richard, and the 
help the Judge might properly give him. So the case is on, and Fenimore 
undertakes the Justification, which of course admits and aggravates the libel; 
80 our side is all made out. But let us see how he gets along : of course, ha 
will not think of off^iing witnesses to swear point-blank that we are homely — 
that, if he did not know it, the Judge would soon tell him would be a simple 
opinion^ which would not do to go to a Jury ; he must present facts. 

" Fenimore. — ' Well, then, your Honor, I offer to prove by this witness that 
the plaintiff is tow-headed, and half bald at that ; he is long-legged, gaunt, 
and most cadaverous of visage — ergo, homely.' 

'■^ Judge. — How does that follow'] Light hair and fair face bespeak a 
purely Saxon ancestry, and were honorable in the good old days : / rule that 
they are comely. Thin locks bring out the phrenological developments, you 
see, and give dignity and massiveness to the aspect ; and as to slenderness, 
what do our dandies lace for if that is not graceful 1 They ought to know 
what is attractive, I reckon. No, sir, your proof is irrelevant, and I rule it 
out.' 

*^ Fenimore (the sweat starting). — 'Well, your Honor, I have evidence to 
prove the said plaintiff slouching in dress ; goes bent like a hoop, and so rock 
ing in gait that he walks down both sides of a street at once.' 

"Judge. — ' That to prove homeliness 7 I hope you don't expect a man of 
ideas to spend his precious time before a looking-glass 7 It would be robbing 
the public. "Bent," do you say? Isn't the curve the true line of beanty, 
I 'd like to know 1 Where were you brought up 7 As to walking, you aon't 
expect " a man of mark," as you called him at Ballston, to be quite as dapper 
and pert as a footman, whose walk is his hourly study and his nightly dream 
and perfection the sum of his ambition ! Great ideas of beauty you must 
have ! That evidence won't answer.' 

" Now, Fenimore, brother in adversity ! wouldn't you begin to have a re- 
alizing sense of your awful situation 7 Would n't you begin to wish yourself 
somewhere else, and a great deal further, before you came into Court to jus- 
tify legally an opinion ? Wouldn't you begin to perceive that the application 
of the Law of Libel in its strictness to a mere expression of opinion is absurd, 
mistaken, and tyrannical 7 

" Of course, we shan't take advantage of your exposed and perilous condi- 
tion, for we are meek and forgiving, with a hearty disrelish for the machinery 
of the law. But if we had a mind to take hold of you, with Richard to help 
us, and the Supreme Court's ruling in actions of libel at our back, wouldn't 
;ou catch it 7 We should get the whole Fund back again, and give a dinner 
to the numerous Editorial contributors. That dinner would be worth attend- 
ing, Fenimore ; and we '11 warrant the jokes to average a good deal better thar 
those you cracked in your speech at Ballston." 



CHAPTER XYIT. • 

THE TRIBUNE CONTINUES. 

The Special Express system— Night adventures of Enoch Ward— Gig Express— F.t 
press from Halif;ix — Baulked by the snow-drifls -Party warfare then — Hooks pub 
lished by Greeley and McKlrath- Course of the Tribune— The Editor travtls— 
Scenes in Washington — An incident of travel — Clay and Frelingluiyseu — The exen 
tions of Horace Greeley — Results of th* defeat— The Tribune and Shivery— Hurn 
ing of the Tribune Building — The Editor's reflections upon the fire. 

"What gunpowder, iinprovod tiro-anns, and drilling have done tor 
war, the railroad and telegraph have done for the daily press, 
namely, reduced success to an affair of calculation and exi)enditure. 
Twelve years ago, there was a chance for the display of individiKil 
enterprise, daring, prowess, in procuring news, and, above all, in be- 
ing the Jirst to announce it ; which was, is, and ever will be, tlie 
point of competition with daily papers. Those were the days of 
the Special Expresses, which appear to have been run, regardless 
of expense, horseflesh, and safety, and in the running of which in- 
credible things were achieved. Not reporters alone were then 
sent to remote places to report an expected speech. The reportei'S 
were accompanied, sometimes, by a rider, sometimes by a corps of 
printers with fonts of type, who set up the speech on the special 
steamboat as fast as the reporters could write it out, and had it 
ready for the press before the steamboat reached the city. Wonder- 
ful things were done by special express in those days ; for the com- 
petition between the rival papers wjis intense beyond description. 

Take these six paragraphs from the Tribune as the sufficient and 
striking record of a state of things long past away. They need no 
explanation or connecting remark. Perhaps they will astonish the 
young reader rather : 

" The Governor's Message reached Wall street last evening, at nine. The 
contract was for three riders and ten relays of horses, and the Express was to 
itaxt at 12 o'clock, M., and reach this city at 10 in the erening. It is not 

206 



^ K ^ 



5. 




THE SPECIAL EXPRESS SYSTEM. 207 

known here whether the arrangements at the other end of the route were 
strictly adhered to ; but if they were, and the Express started at the hour 
agreed upon, it came through in nine hours, making but a fraction less than 
eighteen miles an hour, which seems almost incredible. It is not impossible 
that it started somewhat before the time agreed upon, and quite likely that ex- 
tra riders and horses were employed ; but be that as it may, the dispatch is 
almost — if not quite — unparalleled in this country." 



" Our express, (Mr. Enoch Ward,) with returns of the Connecticut Election, 
left New Haven Monday evening, in a light sulky, at twenty-five minutes be- 
fore ten o'clock, having been detained thirty-five minutes by the non-arrival 
of the Express locomotive from Hartford. He reached Stamford — forty miles 
from New Haven — in three hours. Here it commenced snowing, and the night 
was so exceedingly dark that he could not travel without much risk. He kept 
on, however, with commendable zeal, determined not to be conquered by any 
ordinary obstacles. Just this side of New Rochelle, and while descending a 
hill, he had the misfortune to run upon a horse which was apparently stand- 
ing still in the road. The horse was mounted by a man who must have been 
asleep ; otherwise he would have got out of the way. The breast of the horse 
came in contact with tlie sulky between the wheel and the shaft. The effect 
of the concussion Wii8 to break the wheel of the sulky by wrenching out nearly 
all the spokes. The night was so dark that nothing whatever could be seen, 
and it is not known whether the horse and the stranger received any material 
injury. Mr. Ward then took the harness from his horse, mounted him with- 
out a saddle, and came on to this city, a distance of seventeen miles, arriving 
at five o'clock on Tuesday morning." 



" It will be recollected that a great ado was made upon the receipt in this 
city of the Acadia's news by two of our journals, inasmuch as no other paper 
received the advices, one of them placarding the streets with announcements 
that the news was received by special and exclusive express. Now, the facts 
are these : The Acadia arrived at Boston at half-past three o'clock, the cars 
leaving at four ; in coming to her wharf she struck her bow against the dock 
and immediately reversed her wheels, put out again into the bay, and did 
not reach her berth until past four. But two persons, belonging to the offices 
of the Atlas and Times, jumped on board at the moment the ship struck the 
wharf, obtained their packages, and threw them into the water, whence they 
were taken and put into a gig and taken to the depot. ' Thus,' said the Com' 
mercial, from which we gather the facts stated above ' the gig was the " Spe- 
cial Express," and its tremendous run was from Long Wharf to the depot— 
about one mile !' ' 

" The news by the next steamer is looked for with intense interest, and in 



208 THE TRIBUNE CONTINUES. 

order to place it before our readers at an early moment, we made arrange- 
ments some weeks since to start a horse Express from Halifax across Nova 
Scotia to the Bay of Fundy, there to meet a powerful steamer which will 
convey our Agent and Messenger to Portland. At the latter place we run 
a Locomotive Express to Boston, whence we express it by steam and horse- 
power to New York. Should no unforeseen accident occur, we will be enabled 
by this Express to publish the news in New York some ten, or perhaps fifteen 
or twenty hours before the arrival of the steamer in Boston. The extent of 
this enterprise may in part be judged of by the fact, that we pay no less than 
Eighteen Hundred Dollars for the single trip of the steamer on the Bay of 
Fundy ! It is but fair to add that, in this Express, we were joined from the 
commencement by the Sun of this city, and the North American of Phila- 
delphia; and the Journal of Commerce has also since united with us in the 
enterprise." 



" We were beaten with the news yesterday morning, owing to circumstanceg 
which no human energy could overcome. In spite of the great snow-storm, 
which covered Nova Scotia with drifts several feet high, impeding and often 
overturning our express-sleigh — in defiance of hard ice in the Bay of Fundy 
and this side, often 18 inches thick, through which our steamboat had to plow 
her way — we brought the news through to Boston in thirty-one hours from 
Halifax, several hours ahead of the Cambria herself. Thence it ought to have 
reached this city by 6 o'clock yesterday morning, in ample season to have 
gone south in the regular mail train. It was delayed, however, by unforeseen 
and unavoidable disasters, and only reached New Haven after it should have 
been in this city. From New Haven it was brought hither in four hours and 
a half hy our ever-trusty rider, Enoch Ward, who never lets the grass grow to 
the heels of his horses. He came in a little after 11 o'clock, but the rival ex- 
press had got in over two hours earlier, having made the shortest run from 
Boston on record." 



" The Portland Bulletin has been unintentionally led into the gross error of 
believing the audacious fabrication that Bennett's express came through to 
this city in seven hours and five minutes from Boston, beating onxs five or six 
hours! That express left Boston at 11 P. M. of Wednesday, and arrived here 
20 minutes past 9 on Thursday — actual time on the road, over ten hours. The 
Bulletin further says that our express was sixteen hours on the road. No such 
thing. We lost some fifteen minutes at the ferry on the east side of Boston. 
Then a very short time (instead of an hour and a half, as is reported by the 
express) in finding our agent in Boston ; then an hour in firing up an engine and 
getting away from Boston, where all should have been ready for us, but was not 
The locomotive was over two hours in making the run to Worcester — 42 miles — 
though the Herald runner who cama brough on the arrival of the Cacibria 



PARTY WARFARE THEN. 209 

aome time after, wns carried over it in about half the time, with not one-fourth 
the delay we en ;ountered at the depot in Boston. (We could guess how all 
this was brought about, but it would answer no purpose now.) At Worcester, 
Mr. Twitchell (whom our agent on this end had only been able to find on 
Tuesday, having been kept two days on the route to Boston by a storm, and 
then finding Mr. T. absent in New Hampshire) was found in bed, but got up 
and put off, intending to ride but one stage. At its end, however, he found 
the rider he had hired sick, and had to come along himself. At one stoppiog- 
place, he found his horse amiss, and had to buy one before he could proceed. 
When he reached Hartford (toward morning) there was no engine fired up, no 
one ready, and another hour was lost there. At New Haven our rider was 
asleep, and much time was lost in finding him and getting off. Thus we lost 
in delays, which i/-e could not foresee or prevent,over tfiree hours th'\s side of 
Boston ferry, — the Cambria having arrived two or three days earlier than she 
^as expected, before our arrangements could be perfected, and on the only 
night of the week that the rival express could have beaten even our bad time, 
— the Long Island Railroad being obstructed with snow both before and after- 
ward. The Herald express came in at 20 minutes past 9; our express waa 
here at 15 minutes past 12, or less than three hours afterward. Such are 
the facts. The express for the U. S. Gazette crossed the ferry to Jersey City 
at 10^ instead of 11 1, as we mis-stated recently." 



That will do for the curiosities of the Special Express. Another 
feature has vanished from the press of this country, since those 
paragraphs were written. The leading journals are no longer party 
journals. There are no parties ; and this fact has changed the look, 
and tone, and manner of newspapers in a remarkable degree. As 
a curiosity of old-fashioned party politics, and as an illustration of 
the element in which and with which our hero was compelled oc- 
casionally to labor, I am temi>ted to insert here a few paragraphs 
of one of his day-of-the-election articles. Think of the Tribune of 
to-day^ and judge of the various progress it and the country have 
made, since an article like the following could have seemed at home 
in its columns. 

THE WARDS ARE AWAKE! 

" OLD EIRST ! Steady and true ! A split on men has aroused her to 
bring out her whole force, wbich will tell nobly on the Mayor. Eriends ! fight 
oat your Collector, split fairly, like men, and be good friends as ever at sunset 
to-day ; but be sure not to throw away .our Assistant Alderman. We set 
you down 600 for Robert Smith. 
14 



210 "■ THE TRIBUNE* CONTINUES. 

"SAUCY SECOND ! Never a Loco has a look here ! Our friends are uni- 
ted, and have done their work, though making no noise about it. We count 
on 400 for Smith. 

" GALLANT THIRD ! You are wanted for the full amount ! Things are 
altogether too sleepy here. Why won't somebody run stump, or get up a 
volunteer ticket? We see that the Loco-Foco Collector has Whig ballots 
printed with his name on thcTU ! This ought to arouse all the friends of the 
clean Whig Ticket. Come out, Whigs of the Third ! and pile up 700 major- 
ity for Robert Smith ! One less is unworthy of you ; and you can give more 
if you try. But let it go at 700." 

* * * * * * * :^ Of. 

" BLOODY SIXTH ! We won 't tell all we hope from this ward, but we 
know Aid. Crolius is popular, as is Owen W. Brennan, our Collector, and 
we feel quite sure of their election. We know that yesterday the Locos were 
afraid Shaler u-ould decline, as they said his friends would vote for Crolius 
rather than Emmons, who is rather too well known. We concede 300 major- 
ity to Morris, but our friends can reduce it to 200 if they work right." 

" EMPIRE EIGHTH ! shall your faithful Gedney be defeated 1 Has he 
not deserved better at your hands 7 And Sweet, too, he was foully cheated 
out of his election last year by Loco-Foco fire companies brought in from the 
Fifteenth, and prisoners imported from Blackwell's Island. Eighteen of them 
in one house ! You owe it to your candidates to elect them — you owe it still 
more to yourselves — and yet your Collector quarrel makes us doubt a little. 
Whigs of the Eighth ! resolve to carry your Alderman and you will ! Any 
how, Robert Smith will have a majority — we 'II state it moderately at 200." 

" BLOOMING TWELFTH ! The Country Ward is steadily improving, po- 
litically as well as physically. The Whigs run their popular Alderman of 
last year ; the Locos have made a most unpopular Ticket, which was only 
forced down the throats of many by virtue of the bludgeon. Heads were 
cracked like walnuts the night the ticket was agreed to. We say 50 for 
Smith, and the clean Whig ticket." 

" Whigs of New York ! The day is yours if you will ! But if you 
F^ulk to your chimney corners and let such a man as Robert Smith be 
loeaten by Robert H. Morris, you will deserve to be cheated, plundered and 
trampled on as you have been. But, No ! you will not ! On for Smith 
AND Victory !" 

We now turn over, with necessary rapidity, the pages of the 
third and fourth vohimes of the Tribune, pausing, here and there, 
when something of interest respecting its editor catches our eye. 



BOOKS PUBLISHED BY GREELEY AND MrELRATH. 211 

Greeley and McElrath, we observe, are engaged, soraewliat exten- 
sively, in the business of publishing books. The Whig Almanac ap- 
pears every year, and sells from fifteen to twenty thousand copies. 
It contains statistics without end, and much literature of what may 
be called the Franklin School — short, practical articles on agricul- 
ture, economy, and morals. 'Travels on the Prairies,' Ellsworth's 
* Agricultural Geology,' 'Lardner's Lectures,' 'life and Speeches of 
Henry Clay,' 'Tracts on the Tariff' by Horace Greeley, ' The Farm- 
ers' Library,' are among the works published by Greeley and McEl- 
rath in the years 1843 and 1844. The business was not profitable., 
I believe, and gradually the firm relinquished all their publications, 
except only the Tribune and Almanac. September 1st, 1843, th6 
Evening Tribune began ; the Semi-Weekly, May I7th, 1845. 

Carlyle's Past and Present, one of the three or four Great Books 
of the present generation, was published in May 1843, from a pri- 
vate copy, entrusted to the charge of Mr. R. W. Epperson. The 
Tribune saw its merit, and gave the book a cordial welcome. 
" This is a great book, a noble book," it said, in a second notice, 
" and we take blame to ourself for having rashly asserted, before we 
had read it thoroughly, that the autlior, keen- sighted at discovering 
Social evils and tremendous in depicting them, was yet blind as to 
their appropriaia remedies. He does see and indicate those reme- 
dies — not entirely and in detail, but in spirit and in substance very 
clearly and forcibly. There has no new work of equal practical 
value with this been put forth by any writer of eminence within 
the century. Although specially addressed to and treating of the 
People of England, its thoughts are of immense value and general 
application here, and we hope many thousand copies of the work 
will instantly be put into circulation." 

Later in the year the Tribune introduced to the people of the 
United States, the system of Water-Cure, copying largely from En 
ropean journals, and dilating in many editorial articles on the man- 
ifold and unsuspected virtues of cold water. The Erie Railroad — 
t\at gigantic enterprise — had then and afterwards a powerful friend 
and advocate in the Tribune. In behalf of the unemployed poor, 
the Tribune spuKe wisely, feelingly, and often. To the new Native 
American Purty, it ij^ive no quarter. For Irish Repeal, it fought like 
it tigsr. For Protection and Clay, it co'ild not say enough. Upon 



212 THE TRIBLUE CONTINUES. 

farmers it urged the duty and policy of high farming. To the strong 
unemployed young men of cities, it said repeatedly and in various 
terms, 'Go forth into the Fields and Labor with your Hands.' 

In the autumn, Mr. Greeley made a tour of four weeks in the Far 
West, and wrote letters to the Tribune descriptive and suggestive. 
In December, he spent a few days in Washington, and gave a sorry 
account of the state of things in that ' magnificent mistake.' 

"To a new comer," he wrote, "the Capitol wears an imposing appearance: 
Nay, more. Let him view it for the first time by daylight, with the flag of 
the Union floating proudly above it, (indicating that Congress is in session,) 
and, if he be an American, I defy him to repress a swelling of the heart — a 
glow of enthusiastic feeling. Under these free-flowing Stripes and Stars the 
Representatives of the Nation are assembled in Council — under the emblem 
of the National Sovereignty is in action the collective energy and embodiment 
of that Sovereignty. Proud recollections of beneficent and glorious events 
come thronging thickly upon him — of the Declaration of Independence, the 
struggles of the Revolution, and the far more glorious peaceful advances of 
the eagles of Freedom from the Alleghanies to the Falls of St Anthony and 
the banks of the Osage. An involuntary cheer rushes from his heart to hia 
lips, and he hastens at once to the Halls of Legislation to witness and listen 
to the displays of patriotic foresight, wisdom and eloquence, there evolved. 

" But here his raptures are chilled instanter. Entering the Capitol, he 
finds its passages a series of blind, gloomy, and crooked labyrinths, through 
which a stranger threads his devious way with difficulty, and not at all with- 
out inquiry and direction, to the door of the Senate or House. Here he is 
met, as everywhere through the edifice, by swarms of superserviceable under- 
lings, numerous as the frogs of Egypt, eager to manifest their official zeal 
and usefulness by keeping him out or kicking him out again. He retires dis- 
gusted, and again threads the bewildering maze to the gallery, where (if of 
the House) he can only look down on the noisy Bedlam in action below him — 
somebody speaking and nobody listening, but a buzz of conversation, the trot- 
ting of boys, the walking about of members, the writing and folding of let- 
ters, calls to order, cries of question, calls for Yeas and Nays, Ac, give him 
large opportunities for headache, meager ones for edification. Half an hour 
will usually cure him of all passion for listening to debates in the House. 
There are, of course, occasions when it is a privilege to be here, but I speak of 
the general scene and impression. 

" To-day, but more especially yesterday, a deplorable spectacle has been 
presented here — a glaring exemplification of the terrible growth and difi'usion 
of office-begging. The Loco-Foco House has ordered a clean sweep of all its 
underlings — door-keepers, porters, messenger^ wood-carriers, <fcc., &c. I care 



AN INCIDENT OF TRAVEL. 213 

nothing for this, so far as the turned-out are concerned — let them earn a 
living, like other folks — but the swarms of aspirants that invaded every avenuo 
and hall of the Capitol, making doubly hideous the dissonance of its hundred 
echoes, were dreadful to contemplate. Here were hundreds of young boys, 
from twenty down to twelve years of age, deep in the agonies of this debasing 
game, ear-wigging and button-holding, talking of the services of their fathers 
or brothers to 'the party,' and getting members to intercede for them with the 
appointing power. The new door-keeper was in distraction, and had to hide 
behind the Speaker's chair, where he could not be hunted except by proxy. 
******* 

"The situationofthegreaternumberof Clerks in the departments and other 
subordinate office-holders here is deplorable. No matter what are their re- 
spective salaries, the great mass of them are always behind-hand and getting 
more so. When one is dismissed from office, he has no resource, and no 
ability to wait for any, and considers himself, not unnaturally, a ruined man. 
He usually begs to be reinstated, and his wife writes or goes to the Presi- 
dent or Secretary to cry him back into place with an ' ower-true tale' of a 
father without hope and children without bread ; if repulsed, their prospect 
is dreary indeed. Where office is the sole resource, and its retention depend- 
ent on another's interest or caprice, there is no slave so pitiable as the 
officer. 

" Of course, where every man's livelihood is dependent on a game of chance 
and intrigue, outright gambling is frightfully prevalent. This city is full of 
it in every shape, from the flaunting lottery-office on every corner to the 
secret card-room in every dark recess. Many who come here for office lose 
their last cent in these dens, and have to borrow the means of getting away. 
Such is Washington." 

One incident of travel, and we turn to tlie next volume. It oc- 
curred on ' a Sound steamboat' in the year of our Lord, 1843 • 

" Two cleanly, well-behaved black men, who had just finished a two years' 
term of service to their country on a ship-of-war, were returning from Boston 
to their homes in this city. They presented their tickets, showing that they 
had paid full passage through at Boston, and requested berths. But there 
was no place provided for blacks on the boat ; they could not be admitted to 
the common cabin, and the clerk informed them that they must walk the deck 
all night, returning them seventy-five cents of their passage -money. We 
saw the japtain, and remonstrated on their behalf, and were convinced that 
the fault was not his. There was no space on the boat for a room specially 
for blacl'vS (which would probably cost $20 for every $1 it yielded, as it would 
rareJy be required, and he could not put whites into it) ; he had tried to 
make such a room, but could find no place ; anc" he but a few days before gave 



214 THE TRIBUNE CONTINUES. 

• 

a berth in the cabin to a decent, cleanly colored man, when the other pas- 
sengers appointed a committee to wait on him, and tell him that would not 
answer — so he had to turn out the ' nigger' to pace the deck through the 
night, count the slow hours, and reflect on the glorious privilege of living In 
a land of liberty, where Slavery and tyranny are demolished, and all men are 
free and equal ! 

" Such occurrences as this might make one ashamed of Human Natum. 
We do not believe there is a steamboat in the South where a negro passing a 
night upon it would not have found a place to sleep." 

The year 1844 was the year of Clay and FreliDghiiysen, Polk and 
Dallas, the year of Nativism and the Philadelphia riots, the year 
of delirious hope and deep despair, the year that finished one era of 
politics and began another, the year of Margaret Fuller and the 
burning of the Tribune office, the year when Horace Greeley show- 
ed his friends how hard a man can work, how little he can sleep, 
and yet live. The Tribune began its fourth volume on the tenth of 
April, enlarged one-third in size, with new type, and a modest flour- 
ish of trumpets. It returned thanks to the public for the liberal 
support which had been extended to it from the beginning of its 
career. " Our gratitude," said the editor, " is the deeper from our 
knowledge that many of the views expressed through our columns 
are unacceptable to a large proportion of our readers. We know 
especially that our advocacy of measures intended to meliorate the 
social condition of the toiling millions (not the purpose, but the 
means), our ardent sympathy with the people of Ireland in their 
protracted, arduous, peaceful struggle to recover some portion of 
the common rights of man, and our opposition to the legal extinc- 
tion of human life, are severally or collectively regarded with ex- 
treme aversion by many of our steadfast patrons, whose liberality 
and confidence is gratefully appreciated." To the Whig party, of 
which it was " not an organ, but an humble advocate," its " obliga- 
tions were many and profound." The Tribune, in fact, had become 
the leading Wliig paper of the country. 

Horace Greeley had long set his heart upon the election of Henry 
Clay to the presidency ; and for some special reasons besides the 
general one of his belief that the policy identified with the name 
of Henry Clay was the trua pohcy of the governnient. Henry Clay 
was one of the heroes of his boyhood's admiration. Yet, in 1840 



CLAY AND FRELINGHUYSEN. 



215 



Delieving that Clay conld not be elected, he had used his influence 
to promote the nomination of Gen. Harrison. Then came the death 
of the president, the ' apostasy' of Tyler, and his pitiful attempts to 
secure a re-election. The annexation of Texas loomed up in the 
distance, and the repeal of the tariff of 1842. For these and other 
reasons, Horace Greeley was inflamed with a desire to behold once 
more the triumph of his party, and to see the long career of the 
eminent Kentuckian crowned with its suitable, its coveted reward. 
For this he labored as few men have ever labored for any but per- 
sonal objects. He attended the convention at Baltimore that nomi- 
nated the Whig candidates — one of the largest (and quite the most 
excited) political assemblages that ever were gathered in this coun- 
try. During the summer, he addressed political meetings tliree, 
four, five, six times a week. He travelled far and wide, advising, 
speaking, and in every way urging on the cause. He wrote, on an 
average, /<?wr columns a day for the Tribune. He answered, on an 
average, twenty letters a day. He wrote to such an extent that his 
right arm broke out into biles, and, at one time, there were twenty 
between the wrist and the elbow. He lived, at that time, a long 
distance from the oflfice, and many a hot night he protracted his 
labors till the last omnibus had gone, and he was obliged to trudge 
wearily home, after sixteen hours of incessant and intense exertion. 
The whigs were very confident. They were sure of victory. But 
Horace Greeley knew the country better. If every Whig had worked 
as he worked, how different had been the result! how different the 
subsequent history of the country ! how different its future ! We 
had had no annexation of Texas, n d Mexican war, no tinkering of 
the tariff to keep the nation provincially dependent on Europe, no 
Fugitive Slave Law, no Pierce, no Douglas, no Nebraska ! 

The day before the election, the Tribune had a paragraph which 
shows how excited and how anxious its editor was : " Give to-mor- 
row," he said, " entirely to your country. Grudge her not a mo- 
ment of the daylight. Let not a store or shop be opened — nobody 
can want to trade or work till the contest is decided. It needs 
every man of us, and our utmost exertions, to save the City, the 
State and the Union. A tremendous responsibility rests upon us 
— an electrifying victory or calamitous defeat awaits us. Two days 
only are before us. Action ! Action !" On the morning of the de- 



216 THE TRIBUNE CONTINUES. 

cisive day, Lo said, "Don't mind the rain. It may be bad weather, 
but nothing to what the election of Polk would bring upon us. 
Let no Whig be deterred by rain from doing his whole duty ! Who 
rallies his coat more than his country ?" 

All in vain. The returns came in slowly to what they now do. 
The result of a presidential election is now known in New York 
within a few hours of the closing of the polls. But then it was 
three days before the whigs certainly knew that Harry of the West 
had been beaten by Polk of Tennessee, before Americans knew that 
their voice in the election of president was not the controlling one. 

" Each morning," said the Tribune, a few days after the result 
was known, '' convincing proofs present themselves of the horrid 
effects of Loco-focoism, in the election of Mr. Polk. Yesterday it 
was a countermanding of orders for $8000 worth of stoves ; to-day 
the Pittsburg Gazette says, that two Scotch gentlemen who arrived 
in that city last June, with a capital of £12,000, which they wished 
to invest in building a large factory for the manufacture of woolen 
fabrics, left for Scotland, when they learnt that the Anti-Tariff 
champion was elected. They will return to the rough hills of Scot- 
land, build a factory, and pour their goods into this country when 
Polk and his break-down party shall consummate their political 
iniquity. These are the small first-fruits of Polk's election, the 
younglings of the flock,-^mere hints of the confusion and diflScul- 
ties which will rush down in an overwhelming flood, after the Polk 
machine gets well in motion." 

The election of Polk and Dallas changed the tone of the Tribune 
on one important subject. Until the threatened annexation of Texas, 
which the result of this election made a certainty, the Tribune had 
meddled little with the question of slavery. To the silliness of 
elavery as an institution, to its infinite absurdity and impolicy, to 
the marvelous stupidity of the South in clinging to it with such 
pertinacity, Horace Greeley had always been keenly alive. But he 
bad rather deprecated the agitation of the subject at the North, 
as tending to the needless irritation of the southern mind, as more 
likely to rivet than to unloose the shackles of the slave. It waa 
not till slavery became aggressive, it was not till the machinery of 
politics was moved but with the single purpose of adding slave 
States to the Union, slave members to Congress, that the Tribune 



BURNING OF THE TRIBUNE BUILDING. 217 

assumed an attitude of hostility to the South, and its pet Blunder. 
To a southerner who wrote about this time, inquiring what right th« 
North had to intermeddle with slavery, the Tribune replied, that 
" when we find the Union on the brink of a most unjust and rapa- 
cious war, instigated wholly (as is officially proclaimed) by a deter- 
mination to uphold and fortify Slavery, then we do not see how it 
can longer be rationally disputed that the North has much, very 
much, to do with Slavery. If we may be drawn in to fight for it, 
it would be hard indeed that we should not be allowed to talk of 
it." Thenceforth, the Tribune fought the aggressions of the slave 
power, inch by inch. 

The Tribune continued on its way, triumphant in spite of the 
loss of the election, till the morning of Feb. 5th, 1845, when it had 
the common New York experience of being burnt out. It shall 
tell its own story of the catastrophe : 

•' At 4 o'clock, yesterday morning, a boy in our employment entered our 
publication oflBice, as usual, and kindled a fire in the stove for the day, after 
which he returned to the mailing-room below, and resumed folding news- 
papers. Half an hour afterward a clerk, who slept on the counter of the publi- 
cation ofi&ce, was awoke by a sensation of heat, and found the room in flames. 
He escaped with a slight scorching A hasty effort was made by two or three 
persons to extinguish the fire by casting water upon it, but the fierce wind 
then blowing rushed in as the doors were opened, and drove the flames through 
the building with inconceivable rapidity. Mr. Graham and our clerk, Robert M. 
Strebeigh, were sleeping in the second story, until awakened by the roar of the 
flames, their room being full of smoke and fire. The door and stairway being 
on fire, they escaped with only their night-clothes, by jumping from a rear 
window, each losing a gold watch, and Mr. Graham nearly $500 in cash, which 
was in his pocket book under his pillow. Robert was somewhat cut in the 
face, on striking the ground, but not seriously. In our printing-office, fiftn 
story, two compositors were at work making up the Weekly Tribune for the 
press, and had barely time to escape before the stairway was in flames. In 
the basement our pressmen were at work on the Daily Tribune of the morn- 
ing, and had printed about three-fourths of the edition. The balance of course 
went with everything else, including a supply of paper, and tho Weekly Tri- 
bune, printed on one side. A few books were hastily caught up and saved, but 
nothing else — not even the daily form, on which the pressmen were working 
So complete a destruction of a daily newspaper office was never known. From 
the editorial rooms, not a paper was saved; and, besides all the editor's own 



218 THE TRIBI;]Nifl ^CONTINUES. 

manuscripts, correspondence, and collection of valuable books, sjme manw 
scripts belonging to friends, of great value to them, are gone. 

" Our loss, so far as money can replace it, is about $18,000, of which $10,00C 
was covered by insurance. The loss of property which insurance would not 
cover, we feel more keenly. If our mail-books come out whole from our Sala- 
mander safe, now buried among the burning ruins, we shall be gratefully 
content. 

" It is usual on such occasions to ask, ' Why were you not fully insured**' 
It was impossible, from the nature of our business, that we should be so ; and 
no man could have imagined that such an establishment, in which men were 
constantly at work night and day, could be wholly consumed by fire. There 
has not been another night, since the building was put up, when it could have 
been burned down, even if deliberately fired for that purpose. But when this 
fire broke out, under a strong gale and snow-storm of twenty-four hours' con- 
tinuance, which had rendered the streets impassable, it was well-nigh impos- 
sible to drag an engine at all. Some of them could not be got out of their 
houses ; others were dragged a few rods and then given up of necessity ; and 
those which reached the fire found the nearest hydrant frozen up, and only to 
be opened with an axe. Meantime, the whole building was in a blaze." 

The mail books were saved in the ' roasted Herring,' The pro- 
prietors of the morning papers, even those most inimical, editorial- 
ly, to the Tribune, placed their superfluous materials at its disposal. 
An oflSce was hired temporarily. Type was borrowed and bought. 
All hands worked 'with a will.' The paper appeared the next 
morning at the usual hour, and the number was oue of the best of 
that volume. In three months, the office was rebuilt on improved 
plans, and provided with every facility then known for the issue of 
a daily paper. These were The Tribune's ' Reflections over the Fire,' 
published a few days after its occurrence: 

" We have been called, editorially, to scissor out a great many fires, both 
small and great, and have done so with cool philosophy, not reflecting how 
much to some one man the little paragraph would most assuredly mean. The 
late complete and summary burning up of our office, licked up clean as it was 
by the red flames, in a few hours, has taught us a lesson on this head. Aside 
from all pecuniary loss, how great is the suffering produced by a fire ! A hun- 
dred little articles of no use to any one save the owner, things that people 
would look at day after day, and see nothing in, that we ourselves have con- 
templated with cool indifference, now that they are irrevocably destroyed, 
come up in the shape of reminiscences, and seem as if they had been worth 
their weight in gola. 



MARGARET FULLER. 219 

''"We would not indulge in unnecessary sentiment, but even the old desk al 
which we sat, the ponderous inkstand, the familiar faces of files of Correspond- 
ence the choice collection of pamphlets, the unfinished essay, the charts by 
which we steered — can they all have vanished, never more to be seen 7 Truly 
your fire makes clean work, and is, of all executive officers, super-eminent. 
Perhaps that last choice batch of letters may be somewhere on file ; we are 
almost tempted to cry, ' Devil ! find it up !' Poh ! it is a mere cinder now ; 

some 

*' * Fathoms deep ray letter Ilea ; 

Of its lines is tinder made.' 

** No Arabian tale can cradle a wilder fiction, or show better how altogether 
illusory life is. Those solid walls of brick, those five decent stories, those 
steep and difficult stairs, the swinging doors, the Sanctum, scene of many a 
deep political drama, of many a pathetic tale, utterly whiflfed out, as one sum- 
marily snufiFs out a spermaceti on retiring for the night. And all perfectly 
true. 

" One always has some private satisfaction in his own particular misei'y 
Consider what a night it was that burnt us out, that we were conquered by 
th"e elements, went up in flames heroically on the wildest, windiest, stormiest 
night these dozen years, not by any fault of human enterprise, but fairly con- 
quered by stress of weather ; — there was a great flourish of trumpets at all 
events. 

** And consider, above all, that Salamander safe ; how, after all, the fire, as- 
sisted by the elements, only came off" second best, not being able to reduce that 
safe into ashes. That is the streak of sunshine through the dun wreaths of 
smoke, the combat of human ingenuity against the desperate encounter of the 
seething heat. But those boots, and Webster's Dictionary — well ! we were 
handsomely whipped there, we acknowledge." 



' CHAPTER XVIII. 

MARGARET FULLER. 

Iler writings \n the Tribune— She resides with Mr. Greeley— His narrative— Dietetic 
Sparring— Her manner of writing— Woman's Rights— Her generosity— Her inde- 
pendence—Her love of children— Margaret and Pickie— Her opinion of Mr. Gree- 
ley— Death of Pickie. 

Margaret Fuller's first article in the Tribune, a review of Em- 
erson '«» Essays, appeared on the seventh of December, 1844 ; her 



220 MARGARET FULLER. 

last, "Farewell to l^ew York," was published August 1-st, 1846, on 
the eve of her departure for Europe. From Europe, however, she 
Bent many letters to the Tribune, and continued occasionally, though 
at ever -increasing intervals, to correspond with the paper down 
nearly to the time of her embarkation for her native land in 1 850. 

During the twenty months of her connection with the Tribune, 
she wrote, on an average, three articles a week. Many of them 
were long and elaborate, extending, in several instances, to three and 
four columns ; and, as they were Essays upon authors, rather than 
Reviews of Books, she indulged sparingly in extract. Among her 
literary articles, we observe essays upon Milton, Shelley, Carlyle, 
George Sand, the countess Uahn Hahn, Sue, Balzac, Charles Wes- 
ley, Longfellow, Richter, and other magnates. She wrote, also, a 
few musical and dramatic critiques. Among her general contribu- 
tions, were essays upon the Rights, Wrongs, and Duties of Women, 
a defense of the 'Irish Character,' articles upon 'Christmas,' 'New 
Year's Day,' ' French Gayety,' ' the Poor Man,' ' the Rich Man'/ 
' What fits a man to be a Voter ' — genial, fresh, and suggestive 
essays all. Her defense of the Irish character was very touching 
and just. Her essay on George Sand was discriminating and cour- 
ageous. She dared to speak of her as ' one of the best exponents 
of the difficulties, the errors, the weaknesses, and regenerative 
powers of the present epoch.' "Let no man," continued Miss Ful- 
ler, " confound the bold unreserve of Sand with that of those who 
have lost the feeling of beauty and the love of good. With a bleed- 
ing heart and bewildered feet she sought the Truth, and if she lost 
the way, returned as soon as convinced she had done so, but she 
would never hide the fact that she had lost it. ' What God knows 
I dare avow to man,' seems to be her motto. It is impossible not 
to see in her, not only the distress and doubts of the intellect, but 
the temptations of a sensual nature ; but we see, too, the courage of 
a hero, and a deep capacity for religion. The mixed nature, too, 
fits her peculiarly to speak to men so diseased as men are at present. 
They feel she knows their ailment, and, if she finds a cure, it will 
really be by a specific remedy." 

To giT-e George Sand her due, ten years ago, required more cour 
Rge in a reviewer than it would now to withhold it. 

Margaret Fuller, in the knowledge of literature, was the most 



SHE RESIDES WITH MR. GREELEY. 221 

learned woman of her country, perhaps of her time. Her under- 
standing was greater than her gift. She could appreciate, no/ 
create. She was the noblest victim of that modern error, which 
makes Education and Book-knowledge synonymous terms. Her 
brain was terribly stimulated in childhood by the study of works 
utterly unfit for the nourishment of a child's mind, and in after life, 
it was further stimulated by the adulation of circles who place the 
highest value upon Intelligence, and no value at all upon Wisdom. 
It cost her the best years of her life to unlearn the errors, and to 
overcome the mental habits of her earlier years. But she did it. 
Her triumph was complete. She attained modesty, serenity, disin- 
terestedness, self-control. "The spirit in which we work," says 
Goethe, " is the highest matter." What charms and blesses the 
reader of Margaret Fuller's essays, is not the knowledge they 
convey, nor the understanding they reveal, but the ineffably sweet, 
benign, tenderly humane and serenely high spirit which they 
breathe in every paragraph and phrase. 

During a part of the time of her connection with the Tribune, 
Miss Fuller resided at Mr, Greeley's house, on the banks of the East 
river, opposite the lower end of Blackwell's island. " This place," 
she wrote, " is to me entirely charming ; it is so completely in the 
country, and all around is so bold and free. It is two miles or moro 
from the thickly-settled parts of ISTew York, but omnibuses and cars 
give me constant access to the city, and, while I can readily see 
what and whom I will, I can command time and retirement. Stop- 
ping on the Harlem road, you enter a lane nearly a quarter of a 
mile long, and going by a small brook and pond that locks in the 
place, and ascending a slightly rising ground, get sight of the house, 
which, old-fashioned and of mellow tint, fronts on a flower-garden 
filled with shrubs, large vines, and trim box borders. On both 
udes of the house are beautiful trees, standing fair, full-grown, and 
clear. Passing through a wide hall, you come out upon a piaz- 
za, stretching the whole length of the house, where one can walk in 
all weathers. * * The beauty here, seen by moonlight, is truly 
transporting. I enjoy it greatly, and the genius loci receives me as 
to a home." 

Mr. Greeley has written a singularly interesting account of the 
rise and progress of his friendship with Margaret Fuller, which was 



222 MARGARET FULLER. 

published, a lew years ago, in her fascinating memoirs. A man i«, 
in a degree, that which he loves to praise ; and the narrative re- 
ferred to, tells much of Margaret Fuller, but more of Horace Gree- 
ley. Whatever else should be omitted from this volume, that should 
not be ; and it is, accordingly, presented here without abridgment. 

" My first acquaintance with Margaret Fuller was made through the pages 
of The Vial. The lofty range and rare ability of that work, and its un- 
American richness of culture and ripeness of thought, naturally filled the 
fit audience, though few,' with a high estimate of those who were known as 
its conductors and principal writers. Yet I do not now remember that any 
article, which strongly impressed me, was recognized as from the pen of its 
female editor, prior to the appearance of 'The Great Law-suit,' afterward 
matured into the volume more distinctively, yet not quite accurately, entitled 
' Woman in the Nineteenth Century.' I think this can hardly have failed to 
make a deep impression on the mind of every thoughtful reader, as the pr®- 
duction of an original, vigorous and earnest mind. ' Summer on the Lakes,' 
which appeared some time after that essay, though before its expansion into a 
book, struck me as less ambitious in its aim, but more graceful and delicate 
in its execution ; and as one of the clearest and most graphic delineations ever 
given of the Great Lakes, of the Prairies, and of the receding barbarism, and 
the rapidly -advancing, but rude, repulsive semi-civilization, which were con- 
tending with most unequal forces for the possession of those rich lands. I 
still consider ' Summer on the Lakes' unequaled, especially in its pictures of 
the Prairies, and of the sunnier aspects of Pioneer life. 

" Yet, it was the suggestion of Mrs. Greeley — who had spent some weeks 
of successive seasons in or near Boston, and who had there made the personal 
acquaintance of Miss Fuller, and formed a very high estimate of and warm at- 
tachment for her — that induced me, in the autumn of 1844, to offer her terms, 
which were accepted, for her assistance in the literary department ot The 
Tribune. A home in my family was included in the stipulation. I was my 
self barely acquainted with her when she thus came to reside with us, and I 
did not fully appreciate her nobler qualities for some months afterward 
Though we were members of the same household, we scarcely met save al 
breakfast ; and my time and thoughts were absorbed in duties and cares, 
which left me little leisure or inclination for the amenities of social inter- 
course. Fortune seemed to delight in placing us two in relations of friendly 
antagonism — or rather, to develop all possible contrasts in our ideas and social 
habits. She was naturally inclined to luxury, and a good appearance before 
the world. My pride, if I had any, delighted in bare walls and rugged fare. 
She was addicted to strong tea and coffee, both of which I rejected and con- 
demned, even in the most homeopathic dilutions; while, my general health 



MR. Greeley's narrative. 223 

being sound, and hers sadly impaired, I could not fail to find in her dietectio 
habits the causes of her almost habitual illness ; and once, while we were 
still barely acquainted, when she came to the breakfast- table with a very 
severe headache, I was tempted to attribute it to her strong potations of the 
Chinese leaf the night before. She told me quite frankly that she ' declined 
being lectured on the food or beverage she saw fit to take,' which was but 
reasonable in one who had arrived ftt her maturity of intellect and fixedness 
of habits. So the subject was thenceforth tacitly avoided between us ; but, 
though words were suppressed, looks and involuntary gestures could not sc 
well be ; and an utter divergency of views on this and kindred themes created 
a perceptible distance between us. 

" Her earlier contributions to The Tribune were not her best, and I did not 
at first prize her aid so highly as I afterward learned to do. She wrote always 
freshly, vigorously, but not always clearly ; for her full and intimate ac- 
quaintance with continental literature, especially German, seemed to have 
marred her felicity and readiness of expression in her mother tongue. While 
I never met another woman who conversed more freely or lucidly, the at- 
tempt to commit her thoughts to paper seemed to induce a singular em- 
barrassment and hesitation. She could write only when in the vein, and 
this needed often to be waited for through several days, while the occa- 
sion sometimes required an immediate utterance. The new book must be re- 
viewed before other journals had thoroughly dissected and discussed it, else 
the ablest critique would command no general attention, and perhaps be, by 
the greater number, unread. That the writer should wait the flow of inspira- 
tion, or at least the recurrence of elasticity of spirits and relative health of 
body, will not seem unreasonable to the general reader ; but to the inveterate 
hack-horse of the daily press, accustomed to write at any time, on any sub- 
ject, and with a rapidity limited only by the physical ability to form the re- 
quisite pen-strokes, the notion of waiting for a brighter day, or a happier 
frame of mind, appears fantastic and absurd. He would as soon think of 
waiting for a change in the moon. Hence, while I realized that her contri- 
butions evinced rare intellectual wealth and force, I did not value them as I 
should have done had they been written more fluently and promptly. They 
often seemed to make their appearance ' a day after the fair.' 

" One other point of tacit antagonism between us may as well be noted. 
Margaret was always a most earnest, devoted ehampion of the Emancipation 
of Women from their past and present condition of inferiority, to an inde- 
pendence of Men. She demanded for them the fullest recognition of Social 
and Political Equality with the rougher sex ; the freest access to all stations, 
professions, employments, which are open to any. To this demand I heartily 
acceded. It seemed to me, however, that her clear perceptions of abstract 
right were often overborne, in practice, by the influence of education and 
habit ; that while she demanded absolute equality for Woman, she exacted 9 



224 MARGARET FULLER. 

• 

deference and courtesy from men to women, as women, which was entirely in- 
consistent with that requirement. In my view, the equalizing theory can bo 
enforced only by ignoring the habitual discrimination of men and women, as 
forming separate c/asses, and regarding all alike as simply persons, — as hu- 
man beings. So long as a lady shall deem herself in need of some gentleman's 
i,rm to conduct her properly out of a dining or ball-room, — so long as she 
shall consider it dangerous or unbecoming to walk half a mile alone by night, 
— I cannot see how the ' Woman's Pdghts ' theory is ever to be anything more 
than a logically defensible abstraction. In this view Margaret did not at all 
concur, and the diversity was the incitement to much perfectly good-natured, but 
nevertheless sharpish sparring between us. Whenever she said or did anything 
implying the usual demand of Woman on the courtesy and protection of Man- 
hood, I was apt, before complying, to look her in the face and exclaim with 
marked emphasis, — quoting from her ' Woman in the Nineteenth Century,' — 
* Let them be sea-captains if they will !' Of course, this was given and 
received as raillery, but it did not tend to ripen our intimacy or quicken my 
esteem into admiration. Though no unkind word ever passed between us, 
nor any approach to one, yet we two dwelt for months under the same roof, as 
scarcely more than acquaintances, meeting once a day at a common board, and 
having certain business relations with each other. Personally, I regarded her 
rather as my wife's cherished friend than as my own, possessing many lofty 
qualities and some prominent weaknesses, and a good deal spoiled by the un- 
measured flattery of her little circle of inordinate admirers. For myself, 
burning no incense on any human shrine, I half-consciously resolved to ' keep 
my eye-beam clear,' and escape the fascination which she seemed to exert 
over the eminent and cultivated persons, mainly women, who came to our 
out-of-the-way dwelling to visit her, and who seemed generally to regard her 
with a strangely Oriental adoration. 

" But as time wore on, and I became inevitably better and better acquaint- 
ed with her, I found myself drawn, almost irresistibly, into the general cur- 
rent. I found that her faults and weaknesses were all superficial and obvious 
to the most casual, if undazzled, observer. They rather dwindled than ex- 
panded upon a fuller knowledge ; or rather, took on new and brighter aspects 
m the light of her radiant and lofty soul. I learned to know her as a most 
fearless and unselfish champion of Truth and Human Good at all hazards, 
ready to be their standard-bearer through danger and obloquy, and if need be, 
..heir martyr. I think few have more keenly appreciated the material goods 
of life, — Rank, Riches, Power, Luxury, Enjoyment ; but I know none who 
would have more cheerfully surrendered them all, if the well-being of our 
Race could thereby have been promoted. I have never met another in 
whom the inspiring hope of Immortality was so strengthened into profound- 
est conviction. She did not believe in our future and unending existence,— 
she knew it, and 'ived ever in the broad glare of its morning twilight. Witl 



HEH WRITINGS. 225 

a limited income and liberal wants, she was yet geneious beyond the bounds 
of reason. Had the gold of California been all her own, shr nrould have dis- 
bursed nine-tenths of it in eager and well-directed efforts to stay, or at least 
diminish, the flood of human misery. And it is but fair to state, that the lib* 
erality she evinced was fully paralleled by the liberality she experienced at 
the hands of others. Had she needed thousands, and made her wants known 
she had friends who would have cheerfully supplied her. I think few persons, 
in their pecuniary dealings, have experienced and evinced more of the bettef 
qualities of human nature than Margaret Fuller. She seemed to inspire 
those who approached her with that generosity which was a part of her 
nature. 

" Of her writings I do not propose to speak critically. I think most of her 
contributions to the Tribune, while she remained with us, were characterized by 
a directness, terseness, and practicality, which are wanting in some of her 
earlier productions. Good judges have confirmed my own opinion, that while 
her essays in the Dial are more elaborate and ambitious, her reviews in the 
Tribune are far better adapted to win the favor and sway the judgment of the 
great majority of readers. But, one characteristic of her writings 1 feel 
bound to commend, — their absolute truthfulness. She never asked how this 
would sound, nor whether that would do, nor what would be the effect of say- 
ing anything ; but simply, ' Is it the truth 7 Is it such as the public should 
know?' And if her judgment answered, 'Yes,' she uttered it; no matter 
what turmoil it might excite, nor what odium it might draw down on her own 
head. Perfect conscientiousness was an unfailing characteristic of her literary 
efforts. Even the severest of her critiques, — that on Longfellow's Poems, — 
for which an impulse in personal pique has been alleged, I happen with cer- 
tainty to know had no such origin. When I first handed her the book to re- 
view, she excused herself, assigning the wide divergence of her views of Po- 
etry from those of the author and his school, as her reason. She thus induced 
me to attempt the task of reviewing it myself. But day after day sped by, 
and I could find no hour that was not absolutely required for the performance 
of some duty that would not be put off, nor turned over to another. At length 
I carried the book back to her in utter despair of ever finding an hour in 
which even to look through it; and, at my renewed and earnest request, she 
reluctantly undertook its discussion. The statement of these facts is but an 
EU3t of justice to her memory. 

" Profoundly religious, — though her creed was, at once, very broad and very 
short, with a genuine love for inferiors in social position, whom she was habit- 
ually studying, by her counsel and teachings, to elevate and improve, — she 
won the confidence and affection of those who attracted her, by unbounded 
rympathy and trust. She probably knew the cherished secrets of more hearts 
than any one else, because she freely imparted her own. With a full share 
both of intellectual and of family pride, she pre-eminently recognized and re- 
15 



226 MARGARET FULLER 

sponded to ihe essential brotherhood of all human kind, ' jd needed br <c 
know that a fellow-being required her counsel or assistance, to render her, jot 
merely willing, but eager to impart it. Loving ease, lur;ury, and the world's 
good opinion, she stood ready to renounce them all, af the call of pity or of 
duty. I think no one, not radically averse to the v^nole system of domestio 
servitude, would have treated servants, of whatever class, with such uniform 
and thoughtful consideration, — a regard which wholly merged their factitious 
condition in their antecedent and permanent humanity. I think few servants 
ever lived weeks with her, who were not dignified and lastingly benefited by 
her influence and her counsels They might be at first repelled, by what 
seemed her too stately manner and exacting disposition, but they soon learned 
to esteem and love her. 

" I have known few women, and scarcely another maiden, who had th» 
heart and the courage to speak with such frank compassion, in mixed circles 
of the most degraded and outcast portion of the sex. The contemplation of 
their treatment, especially by the guilty authors of their ruin, moved her to a 
calm and mournful indignation, which she did not attempt to suppress nor 
control. Others were willing to pity and deplore ; Margaret was more inclined 
to vindicate and to redeem. She did not hesitate to avow that on meeting 
Bome of these abused, unhappy sisters, she had been surprised to find them 
scarcely fallen morally below the ordinary standard of Womanhood, — realiz- 
ing and loathing their debasement ; anxious to escape it ; and only repelled 
by the sad consciousness that for them sympathy and society remained only so 
long as they should persist in the ways of pollution. Those who have read 
her ' Woman,' may remember some daring comparisons therein suggested be- 
tween these Pariahs of society and large classes of their respectable sisters ; 
and that was no fitful expression, — no sudden outbreak, — but impelled by her 
most deliberate convictions. I think, if she had been born to large fortune, a 
house of refuge for all female outcasts desiring to return to the ways of 
Virtue, would have been one of her most cherished and first realized concep- 
tions. 

" Her love of children was one of her most prominent characteristics. The 
pleasure she enjoyed in their society was fully counterpoised by that she im- 
parted. To them she was never lofty, nor reserved, nor mystical ; for no one 
had ever a more perfect faculty for entering into their sports, their feelings, 
their enjoyments. She could narrate almost any story in language level to 
their capacities, and in a manner calculated to bring out their hearty and often 
boisterously-expressed delight. She possessed marvelous powers of observa- 
tion and imitation or mimicry ; and, had she been attracted to tho stage, 
would have been the first actress America has produced, whether in tragedy or 
comedy, Her faculty of mimicking was not needed to commend her to the 
hearts of children, but it had its effect in increasing the fascinations of her 
genial nature and her heartfelt joy in their society. To amuse and instruct them 



MARGARET AND PICKIE. 227 

ipas an achievement for which she would readily forego any personal object ; 
and her intuitive perception of the toys, games, stories, rhymes, Ac, best 
adapted to arrest and enchain their attention, was unsurpassed. Between her 
and my only child, then living, who was eight months old when she came to 
us, and something over two years when she sailed for Europe, tendrils of af- 
fection gradually intertwined themselves, which I trust Death has not severed, 
but rather multiplied and strengthened. She became his teacher, playmate, 
and monitor ; and he requited her with a prodigality of love and admiration. 

" I shall not soon forget their meeting in my office, after some weeks' sepa- 
ration, just before she left us forever. His mother had brought him in from 
the country, and left him asleep on my sofa, while she was absent making 
purchases, a!*d he had rolled oflF and hurt himself in the fall, waking with the 
shock in a frenzy of anger, just before Margaret, hearing of his arrival, rushed 
into the office to find him. I was vainly attempting to soothe him as she en- 
tered ; but he was running from one end to the other of the office, crying pas- 
sionately, and refusing to be pacified. She hastened to him, in perfect confi- 
dence that her endearments would calm the current of his feelings, — that the 
sound of her well-remembered voice would banish all thought of his pain,-^ 
and that another moment would see him restored to gentleness ; but, half- 
wakened, he did not heed her, and probably did not even realize who it was 
that caught him repeatedly in her arms and tenderly insisted that he should 
restrain himself At last she desisted in despair ; and, with the bitter tears 
streaming down her face, observed : — ' Pickie, many friends have treated me 
unkindly, but no one had ever the power to cut me to the heart as you have !' 
Being thus let alone, he soon came to himself, and their mutual delight in the 
meeting was rather heightened by the momentary estrangement. 

" They had one more meeting ; the last on earth ! * Aunty Margaret' was 
to embark for Europe on a certain day, and ' Pickie' was brought into the city 
to bid her farewell. They met this time also at my office, and together we 
thence repaired to the ferry-boat, on which she was returning to her residence 
in Brooklyn to complete her preparations for the voyage. There they took a 
tender and affecting leave of each other. But soon his mother called at the 
office, on her way to the departing ship, and we were easily persuaded to ac- 
company her thither, and say farewell once more, to the manifest satisfaction 
of both Margaret and the youngest of her devoted friends. Thus they parted, 
never to meet again in time. She sent him messages and presents repeatedly 
from Europe ; and he, when somewhat older, dictated a letter in return, which 
was joyfully received and acknowledged. When the mother of our great- 
gouled friand spent some days with us nearly two years afterward, ' Pickie' 
talked to her often and lovingly of ' Aunty Margaret,' proposing that they two 
should ' take a bout and go over and see her,' — for, to his infantile conception, 
the low coast of Long Island, visible just across the East River, was that Eu- 
rope to wh'ch she had sailed, and where she was unaccountably detained so 



228 MARGARET FULLER. 

long, Alas ! a far longer and more adventurous journey was required to re- 
unite those loving souls ! The 12th of July, 1849, saw him stricken down 
from health to death, by the relentless cholera ; and my letter, announcing 
that calamity, drew from her a burst of passionate sorrow, such as hardly any 
bereavement but the loss of a very near relative could have impelled. An- 
other year had just ended, when a calamity, equally sudden, bereft a wide 
circle of her likewise, with her husband and infant son. Little did I fear, 
when I bade her a confident Good-by, on the deck of her outward-bound ship, 
that the sea would close over her earthly remains ere we should meet again ; 
far less that the light of my eyes and the cynosure of my hopes, who then 
bade her a tenderer and sadder farewell, would precede her on the dim path- 
way to that ' Father's house' whence is no returning ! Ah, well ! God is above 
all, and gracious alike in what He conceals and what He discloses ; — benignant 
and bounteous, as well when He reclaims as when He bestows. In a few years, 
at farthest, our loved and lost ones will welcome us to their home." 

Margaret Fuller, on her part, was fully sensible of the merits of 
him who has so touchingly embalmed her memory. " Mr. Greeley," 
she wrote in a private letter, " is a man of genuine excellence, hon- 
orible, benevolent, and of an uncorrupted disposition. He is saga- 
cious, and, in his way, of even great abilities. In modes of life and 
manner he is a man of the people, and of the American people." 
And again : " Mr. Greeley is in many ways very interesting for me 
to know. He teaches me things, which my own influence on those 
who have hitherto approached me, has prevented me from learning. 
In our business and friendly relations, we are on terms of solid 
good-will and mutual respect. With the exception of my own 
mother, I think him the most disinterestedly generous person I have 
ever known." And later she writes : "You have heard that the 
Tribune OflSce was burned to the ground. For a day I thought it 
must make a difference, but it has served only to increase my admi- 
ration for Mr. Greeley's smiling courage. He has really a strong 
character." 

In another letter, written at Rome in 1849, there is another allu- 
sion to Mr. Greeley and his darling boy. " Receiving," she said, " a 
few days since, a packet of letters from America, I opened them 
with more feeling of hope and good cheer, than for a long time 
past. The first words that met my eye were these, in the hand of 
Mr. Greeley: 'Ah, Margaret, the world grovi^s dark with us! You 
grieve, for Rome is fallen ; I mourn, for Pickie is dead.' 



EDITORIAL REPARTEES. 229 

"I h,'),ve shed rivers of tears over the inexpressibly aifecting letter 
Ichus begun. One would think I might have become familiar enough 
with images of death and destruction ; yet somehow the image of 
Pickle's little dancing figure, lying, stiff and stark, between his par- 
ents, has made me weep more than all else. There was little hope 
he could do justice to himself, or lead a happy life in so perplexed 
a world ; but never was a character of richer capacity, — never a 
more charming child. To me he was most dear, and would always 
have been so. Had he become stained with earthly faults, I could 
never have forgotten what he was when fresh from the soul's homo, 
and what he was to me when my soul pined for sympathy, pure 
and unalloyed." 

A few months after these words were written, Margaret Fuller 
sai^? her native shores; but she was destined never to tread them 
again. The vessel in which she was a passenger was wrecked on 
the coast of Long Island. The body of her infant son was washed 
on shore, but she and her husband found death, burial, requiem, all 
in the deep. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

EDITORIAL REPARTEES. 

At war with all the world— The spirit of ihe Tribune— Retorts vituperative— The Tri- 
bune and Dr. Potts— Some prize tracts suggested— An atheist's oath— A word for 
donnestics— Irish Democracy- The modem drama— Hit at Dr. Hawlss— Dissolution 
of the Union— Dr. Franklin's story— A Picture for Polk— Charles Dickena and 
Copyright— Charge of Malignant falsehood— Preaching and Practice— Col. Webb 
severely hit— Hostiliiy to the Mexican war— Violence incited— A few sparks— The 
course of the Tribune— Wager with the Herald. 

The years 1845, 1846, and 1847, were emphatically the fighting 
yea,rs of the ISTew York Tribune. If it was not at war with all 
the world, all the world seemed to be at war with it, and it was 
kept constantly on the defensive. With the ' democratic ' press, of 
course, it could not be at peace. The whig press of the city de- 
nounced it; really because it was immovably prosperous, (istensibly 



230 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. 

on tlie ground of its I'ourierite and progressive tendencies. Its oppo- 
Bition to capital punisliment, the freedom of its reviews, and the 
hospitality it gave to every new thought,' gave oifense to the relig- 
ious press. Its tremendous hostility to the Mexican war excited the 
anim-^sity of all office-holders and other patriots, including the pres- 
ident, who made a palpable allusion to the course of the Tribune in 
one of his messages. There was talk even of roobbing the office, 
at one of the war meetings in the Park. Its zeal in behalf of Irish 
repeal alienated the English residents, who naturally liked the 
'pluck' and independence of the Tribune. Its hostility to the slave 
power provoked the south, and all but destroyed its southern cir- 
culation. It offended bigots by giving Thomas Paine his due ; it 
offended unbelievers by refusing to give him more. Its opposition 
to the drama, as it is, called forth many a sneer from the papers 
who have the honor of the drama in their special keeping. The 
extreme American party abhorred its enmity to Nativisra. The 
extreme Irish party distrusted it, because in sentiment and feeling 
it was thoroughly Protestant. The extreme liberal party disliked 
its opposition to their views of marriage and divorce. In a word, 
if the course of the Tribune had been suggested by a desire to give 
the greatest offense to the greatest number, it could hardly have 
made more enemies than it did. 

In the prospectus to the fifth volume, the editor seemed to antici- 
pate a period of inky war. 

" Our conservatism," he said, " is not of that Chinese tenacity which insists 
that the bad must be cherished simply because it is old. We insist only that 
the old must be proved bad and never condemned merely because it is old; 
and that, even if defective, it should not be overthrown till something better 
has been provided to replace it. The extremes of blind, stubborn resistance 
to change, and rash, sweeping, convulsive innovation, are naturally allias, eacb 
paving the way for the other. The supple courtier, the wholesale flatterer of 
the Despot, and the humble servitor and bepraiser of the dear People, are not 
two distinct characters, but essentially the same. Thus believing, we, while 
Vre do not regard the judgment of amy present majority as infallible, cannot 
attribute infallibility to any acts or institutes of a past generation, but look un- 
doubtingly for successive improvements as Knowledge, Virtue, Philanthropy, 
shall be more and more diffused among men. 

" Full of error and suflf«ring as the world yet is, we cannot afford to reject 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TRIBUNE. 231 

anexamined any idea which proposes to improve the Moral, Intellectual, or 
Social condition of mankind. Better incur the trouble of testing and explod- 
ing a thousand fallacies than by rejecting stifle a single beneficent truth. Eg- 
pecially on the vast theme of an improved Organization of Industry, so as to 
secure constant opportunity and a just recompense to every human being able 
and willing to labor, we are not and cannot be indifferent. 

" No subject can be more important than this ; no improvement more cer- 
tain of attainment. The plans hitherto suggested may all prove abortive ; 
the experiments hitherto set on foot may all come to nought, (as many of 
them doubtless will;) yet these mistakes shall serve to indicate the true means 
of improvement, and these experiments shall bring nearer and nearer the 
grand consummation which they contemplate. The securing of thorough Edu- 
cation, Opportunity and just Reward to all, cannot be beyond the reach of 
the nineteenth century. To accelerate it, the Tribune has labored and will 
labor resolutely and hopefully. Those whose dislike to or distrust of the in- 
vestigations in this field of human effort impel them to reject our paper, have 
ample range for a selection of journals more acceptable." 

In the spirit of these words the Tribune was conducted. And 
every man, in any age, who conducts his lile, his nev-^spaper, or his 
business in that spirit, will be misunderstood, distrusted and hated, 
in exact proportion to his fidehty to it. Perfect fidelity, the world 
will 80 entirely detest that it will destroy the man who attains to it. 
The world will not submit to be so completely put out of counte- 
nance. 

My task, in this chapter, is to show how the editor of the Tri- 
bune comported himself when he occupied the position of target- 
general to the Press, Pulpit, and Stump of the United States. He 
was not in the slightest degree distressed or alarmed. On the con- 
trary, I think he enjoyed the position ; and, though he handled his 
enemies without gloves, and called a spade a spade, and had to dis- 
patch a dozen foemen at once, and could not pause to select his 
weapons, yet I can find in those years of warfare no trace of bitter- 
ness on his part. There is no malice in his satire, no spite in his 
anger. He seems never so happy as when he is at bay, and is never 
so funny as when he is repelling a personal assault. I have before 
me several hundreds of his editorial hits and repartees, ^orae serious, 
more comic, some refuting argument, others exposing slander, some 
merely vituperative, others i ery witty, all exti-emely readable. 



232 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. 

thoagh the occasions that called them fortli have I tag passed by. 
My plan is to select and condense a few of each kind, presenting 
only the point of each. 

Many of our editor's replies are remarkable chiefly for their 'free 
and easy' manner, their ignoring of ' editorial dignity.' A specimen 
or two : 

In reply to a personal attack by Major Noah, of the Union, he 
begins, " We ought not to notice this old villain again." On another 
occasion, " What a silly old joker this last hard bargain of Tylerisra 
is!" On another, "Major Noah! ^ivhj won't you tell the truth once 
in a century, for the variety of the thing." On another, " And it is 
by such poor drivel as this that the superannuated renegade from 
all parties and all principles attempts to earn his forced contribu- 
tions and 'Official' advertisements! Surely his latest purchasers 
must despise their worn-out tool, and most heartily repent of their 
hard bargain." 

Such mild openings as the following are not uncommon : 

"The Journal of Commerce is the most self-complacent and dogmatic of 
all possible newspapers." 

" The villain who makes this charge against me well knows that it is the 
basest falsehood " 

" We defy the Eather of lies himself to crowd more stupendous falsehoods 
Into a paragraph than this contains." 

" Mr. Benton ! each of the above observations is a deliberate falsehood, and 
you are an unqualified villain 1" 

'' The Express is surely the basest and paltriest of all possible journals." 

•' Having been absent from the city for a few days, I perceive with a pleas- 
urable surprise on my return that the Express has only perpetrated two aew 
calumnies upon me of any consequence since Friday evening." 

" 'Ephraim,' said a grave divine, taking his text from one of the prophets, 
* is a cake not turned. (Hosea, vii. 8.) Let us proceed, therefore, brethren, 
to turn Ephraim — first, inside out ; next, back-side before ; and, thirdly, 
'tother end up.' 

•' We are under the imperative necessity of performing on Samuel of this 
day a searching operation like unto that of the parson on Ephraim of old." 

That will suffice for the vituperative. We proceed to those of 
another description : 



THE TRIBUNE AND DR. POTTS. 233 

PRO VO CATION. 

A Sermou by Dr. Potts, denouncing the Tribune as agrarian, &o., 
reported in the Oou/ier and Enquirer. 

REPLY. 

" It is quite probable that we have some readers among the pew-holders 
of a church so wealthy and fashionable as the Dr.'s, though few, we presume, 
among divines as well salaried as he is. We will only ask those of our patrons 
who may obey his command to read for their next Scripture lesson the xxvth 
Chapter of Leviticus, and reflect upon it for an hour or so. We are very sure 
they will find the exercise a profitable one, in a sense higher than they will 
have anticipated. Having then stopped the Tribune, they will meditate at 
leisure on the abhorrence and execration with which one of the Hebrew Proph- 
ets must have regarded any kind of an Agrarian or Anti-Renter ; that is, 
one opposed to perpetuating and extending the relation of Landlord and 
Tenant over the whole arable surface of the earth. Perhaps the contempla- 
tion of a few more passages of Sacred Writ may not be unprofitable in a moral 
sense — for example : 

" ' Woe unto them that join [add] house to house, that lay field to field 
that there be no place, that they be placed alone in the midst of the earth.' 
— Isaiah, v. 8. 

" ' One thing thou lackest : go thy way, sell whatever thou hast, and give 
to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come, take up the 
the cross, and follow me : 

" * And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly 
shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God !' — Mark, x. 21-23. 

*' ' And all that believed were together, and had all things common ; and 
Bold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, as every man had 
need.' — Acts, ii. 44, 45. 

" We might cite columns of this sort from the Sacred Volume, showing a 
deplorable lack of Doctors of Divinity in ancient times, to be employed at 
83,500 a year in denouncing, in sumptuous, pew-guarded edifices costing 
$75,000 each, all who should be guilty of ' loosening the faith of many in the 
established order of things.^ Alas for their spiritual blindness ! the ancient 
Prophets — God's Prophets — appear to have slight faith in or reverence for 
that 'established order' themselves ! Their 'schemes' appear to have been 
regarded as exceedingly ' disorganizing' and hostile to 'good order' by the 
spiritual rulers of the people in those days. 

" That Dr. Potts, pursuing (we trust) the career most congenial to his feel- 
ings, surrounded by every comfort and luxury, enjoying the best society, and 
3nabled to support and educate his children to the bight of his desires, should 
be inclined to reprobate all ' nostrums ' for the cure of Social evils, and sneer 



234 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. 

at ' labor-saving plans ' of cooking, washing, schooling, &c., is rather deplora- 
ble than surprising. Were he some poor day-laborer, subsisting his family 
and paying rent on the dollar a day he could get when the weather permittod 
and some employer's necessity or caprice gave him a chance to earn it, we be- 
lieve he would view the subject differently. As to the spirit which can db- 
nounce by wholesale all who labor in behalf of a Social Reform, in defiance 
of general obloquy, rooted prejudice, and necessarily serious personal sacri- 
fices, as enemies of Christianity and Good Morals, and call upon the public to 
starve them into silence, does it not merit the rebuke and loathing of every 
generous mind? Heaven aid us to imitate, though afar off, that Divinest 
charity which could say for its persecutors and murderers, ' Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do!' 

********* 
"We are profoundly conscious that the moral tone and bearing of the Press 
fall very far beneath their true standard, and that it too often panders to pop- 
ular appetites and prejudices when it should rather withstand and labor to cor- 
rect them. We, for example, remember having wasted many precious col- 
umns of this paper, whereby great good might have been done, in the publi- 
cation of a controversy on the question, 'Can there be a Church without a 
Bishop 1' — a controversy unprofitable in its subject, verbose and pointless in its 
logic, and disgraceful to our common Christianity in its exhibitions of unchar- 
itable temper and gladiatorial tactics. The Rev. Dr. Potts may also remem- 
ber that controversy. We ask the Pulpit to strengthen our '»wn fallible reso- 
lution never to be tempted by any hope of pecuniary profit, (pretty sure to be 
delusive, as it ought,) into meddling with s«ch another discreditable per- 
formance. 

" We do not find, in the Courier's report of this sermon, any censures upon 
that very large and popularly respectable class of journals which regularly 
hire out their columns. Editorial and Advertising, for the enticement of their 
readers to visit grogeries, theaters, horse-races, as we sometimes have thought- 
lessly done, but hope never, unless through deplored inadvertence, to do again. 
The difficulty of entirely resisting all temptations to these lucrative vices is so 
great, and the temptations themselves so incessant, while the moral mischief 
thence accruing is so vast and palpable, that we can hardly think the Rev. Dr. 
slurred over the point, while we can very well imagine that his respected dis- 
ciple and reporter did so. At this moment, when the great battle of Temper- 
ance against Liquid Poison and its horrible sorceries is convulsing our State, 
and its issue trembles in the balance, it seems truly incredible that a Doctor 
of Divinity, lecturing on the iniquities of the Press, can have altogether over- 
looked this topic. Cannot the Courier from its reporter's notes supply th« 
omission?" 

PBOVOOATION. 

An advertisement offering a prize of fifty dollars for the best 



SOME PRIZE TRACTS SUGGESTED. 235 

tract <! u the Impropriety of Dancing by members of churches, tho 
tract to be published by the American Tract Society. 



" The notice copied above suggests to us some other subjects on which we 
think Tracts are needed — subjects which are beginning to attract the thoughts 
of not a few, and which are, like dancing, of practical moment. We would 
suggest premiums to be oflFered, as follows : 

" S20 for the best Tract on * The rightfulness and consistency of a Chris- 
tian's spending $5,000 to $10,000 a year on the appetites and enjoyments of 
himself and family, when there are a thousand families within a mile of him 
who are compelled to live on less than $200 a year. 

" $10 for the best Tract on the rightfulness and Christianity of a Christian's 
building a house for the exclusive residence of himself and family, at a cost 
of $50,000 to $100,000, within sight of a hundred families living in hovels 
worth less than $100. 

" $5 for the best Tract on the Christianity of building Churches which cost 
$100,000 each, in which poor sinners can only worship on sufferance, and in 
the most out-of-the-way corners. 

" We would not intimate that these topics are by any means so important as 
that of Dancing — far from it. The sums we suggest will shield us from that 
imputation. Yet we think these subjects may also be discussed with profit, 
and, that there may be no pecuniary hindrance, we will pay the premiums 
if the American Tract Society will publish the Tracts." 

PROVOCATION. 

An assertion in the Express, that the Tribune bestows " peculiar 
commendation upon that part of the new Constitution which take? 
away the necessity of believing in a Supreme Being, on the part of 
him who may be called to swear our lives or property away." 



•' ' The necessity of believing in a Supreme Being,' in order to be a legal 
witness, never existed ; but only the necessity of prof essing to believe it. Now, 
1 thorough villain who was at the same time an Atheist would be pretty apt 
to keep to himself a belief, the avowal of which would subject him to legal 
penalties and popular obloquy, but a sincere honest man, whose mind had be- 
come confused or clouded with regard to the evidence of a Universal Father 
would be very likely to confess his lack of faith, and thereby be disabled from 
testifying. Such disability deranges the administration of justice and facil 
itates the escape of the guilty." 



236 EDITORIAL^ REPARTEES. 

PEOVOOATION. 

An assertion that it is false pride^ that makes domestic service so 
abhorrent to American girls. 



" You, Madam, who talk so flippantly of the folly or false pride of our girls, 
have you ever attempted to put yourself in their place and consider the mat- 
ter 1 Have you ever weighed in the balance a crust and a garret at home, 
with better food and lodging in the house of a stranger 1 Have you ever 
thought of the difference between doing the most arduous and repulsive work 
for those you love, and who love you, and doing the same in a strange place 
for those to whom your only bond of attachment is six dollars a month 7 
Have you ever considered that the words of reproof and reproach, so easy to 
utter, are very hard to bear, especially from one whose right so to treat you 
is a thing of cash and of yesterday 1 Is the difference between freedom and 
service nothing to you 1 How many would you like to have ordering you 7" 

PROVOCATION. 

A vain-glorious claim to pure democracy on the part of a pro- 
slavery Irish paper. 

" We like Irish modesty — it is our own sort — but Irish ideas of Liberty are 
not always so thorough and consistent as we could wish them. To hate and 
resist the particular form of Oppression to which we have been exposed, by 
which we have suffered, is so natural and easy that we see little merit in it ; 
to loathe and defy all Tyranny evermore, is what few severe sufferers by Op- 
pression ever attain to. Ages of Slavery write their impress on the souls of 
the victims — we must not blame them, therefore, but cannot stifle our con- 
sciousness nor suppress our sorrow. It is • sad to see how readily the great 
mass of our Irish-born citizens, themselves just escaped from a galling, de- 
grading bondage, lend themselves to the iniquity of depressing and flouting 
the down-trodden African Race among us — it was specially sad to see them 
come up to the polls in squads, when our present State Constitution was adopt- 
ed, and vote in solid mass against Equal Suffrage to all Citizens, shouting 
'Down with the Nagurs ! Let them go back to Africa, where they belong P 
— for such was the language of Adopted Citizens of ono or two years' stand 
ing with regard to men born here, with their ancestors before them for several 
generations. We learn to hate Despotism and Enslavement more intensely 
when we are thus confronted by their ineffaceable impress on the souls of 
too many of their victims." 



THE MODERN DRAMA. 237 

PROVOCATION. 

An article in the Sunday Mercury condemning the Tribune foi 
excluding theatrical criticism. 

REPLY. 

" The last time but one that we visited a theater — it was from seven to ten 
years ago — we were insulted by a ribald, buflFoon song, in derision of total ab- 
stinence from intoxicating liquors. During the last season we understand that 
Mr. Brougham — whom we are specially blamed by the Mercury for not help- 
ing to a crowded benefit — has made a very nice thing of ridiculing Socialism. 
We doubt whether any great, pervading reform has been effected since there 
was a stage, which that stage has not ridiculed, misrepresented, and held up 
to popular odium. It is in its nature the creature of the mob — that is, of the 
least enlightened and least earnest portion of the community — and flatters the 
prejudices, courts the favor, and varnishes the vices of that portion. It bel- 
lows lustily for Liberty — meaning license to do as you please — but has small 
appetite for self-sacrifice, patient industry, and an unselfish devotion to duty. 
We fear that we shall not be able to like it, even with its groggeries and assig- 
nation-rooms shut up — but without this we cannot even begin." 

PROVOCATION. 

A sermon by Dr. Hawks denouncing Socialism in the usual style 
of well-fed thoughtlessness. 

REPLY. 

" If ' the Socialists,' as a body, were called upon to pronounce upon the pro- 
priety of taking the property of certain doctors of divinity and dividing it 
among the mechanics and laborers, to whom they have run recklessly and 
heavily in debt, we have no doubt they would vote very generally and heartily 
in the affirmative." 

PROVOCATION. 

A letter bewailing the threatened dissolution of the Union. 

REPLY. 

" The dissolution of the Union would not be the dreadful affair he repre- 
sents it. It would be a very absurd act on the part of the seceding party, and 
would work great inconvenience and embarrassment, especially to the people 
of the great Mississippi Valley. In time, however, matters would accommo- 
date themselves to the new political arrange raents, and we should grow aa 
oiany bushels of corn to the acre, and get as many yards of cloth from a ban 



238 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. 

dred pounds of wool, as we now do. The Union is an excellent thing — quite 
too advantageous to be broken up in an age so uMl'tarian as this ; but it ia 
possible to exaggerate even its blessings." 



PKOYOOATION. 

An article in a Southern paper recommending the secession of 
the Slave States from the Union. 

REPLY. 

" Dr. Franklin used to tell an anecdote illustrative of his idea of the folly 
of dueling, substantially thus : A man said to another in some public place, 
' Sir, I wish you would move a little away from me, for a disagreeable odor pro- 
ceeds from you.' 'Sir,' was the stern response, ' that is an insult, and you must 
fight me !' ' Certainly,' was the quiet reply, ' I will fight you if you wish 
it ; but I don't see how that can mend the matter. If you kill me, I also shall 
smell badly ; and if I kill you, you will smell worse than you do now.' 

" We have not yet been able to understand what our Disunionists, North or 
South, really expect to gain by dissolving the Union. * * * « Three valu- 
able slaves escaped,' do you say 7 Will slaves be any less likely to run away 
when they know that, once across Mason and Dixon's line, they are safe from 
pursuit, and can never be reclaimed ? ' Every slaveholder is in continual ap- 
apprehension,' say you 1 In the name of wonder, how is Disunion to soothe 
their nervous excitement ? They ' won't stand it,' eh 7 Have they never 
heard of getting ' out of the frying-pan into the fire' 1 Do let us hear how 
Slavery is to be fortified and perpetuated by Disunion !" 



PROVOCATION. 

The excessive ccnjidence of Whigs in the election of Henry Clay. 



" There is an old legend that once on a time all the fo.ks in the world 
entered into an agreement that at a specified moment they would give one 
unanimous shout, just to see what a noise they could make, and what tre 
mendous eff"ects it would produce. The moment came — everybody was ex 
pecting to see trees, if not houses, thrown down by the mighty concussion ; 
»rhen lo ! the only sound was made by a dumb old woman, whose tongue waa 
loosed by the excitement of the occasion. The rest had all stood with mouths 
and ears wide open to hear the great noise, and so forgot to make any ! 

" The moral we tru»t our Whig friends everywhere will take to heart." 



A PICTURE FOR POLK. 



239 



PEOYOOATIOJJ'. 



The passage in the President's Message which condemned thof 
who opposed the Mexican war as unpatriotic. 



REPLY. 



^idii^e folr \\)z £i*e^i5er)t'3 ^efi-^ooir). 



^ 




"IS THIS WAR?" 

" Monterey, Oct. 7, 1846. 
'* While I was stationed with our left wing in one of the forts, 
on the evening of the 21st, I saw a Mexican woman busily en- 
gaged in carrying bread and water to the wounded men of both 
armies. I saw this ministering angel raise the head of a 
wounded man, give him water and food, and then carefully 
bind up his wound with a handkerchief she took from her own 
head. After having exhausted her supplies, she went back to 
her own house to get more broad and water for others. As she 
was returning on her mission of mercy, to comfort other wound- 
ed persons, I heard the report of a gun, and saw the poor in- 
nocent creature fall dead! I think it was an accidental shot 
that struck her. I would not be willing to believe otherwise. 
It made me sick at heart, and, turning from the scene, I in- 
voluntarily raised my eyes towards heaven, and thought, great 
God ! and is this War 7 Passing the spot next day, I saw her 
body still lying there with the bread by her side, and the broken 
gourd, with a few drops of water still in it — emblems of her 
errand. We buried her, and while we were digging her grave, 
cannon balls flew around us like hail." — Cor. Louisville Cour. 



^W^QjSNei^U^^cSSNe^'^S^^^SJ^^V'QiiSN^®^ 



PROVOCATION. 



Complaints of Charles Dickens' Advocacy of International 0">,03' 
right at public dinners. 



REPLY. 

" We trust he will not be deterred from speaking the frank, round truth bj 
any mistaken courtesy, difiBdence, or misapprehension of public sentiment. 
He ' ught to speak out on this matter, for who shall protest against robbery 



240 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. 

if those who are robbed may nof? Here is a man who writes for a living 
and writes nobly ; and we of this country greedily devour his writings, arc 
entertained and instructed by them, yet refuse so to protect his rights as an 
author that he can realize a single dollar from all their vast American sale 
and popularity. Is this right? Do we look well offering him toasts, compli- 
ments, and other syllabub, while we refuse him naked justice? while we 
Bay that every man may take from him the fruits of his labors without recom- 
pense or redress 1 It does very well in a dinner speech to say that fame and 
pop\jlarity, and all that, are more than sordid gold ; but he has a wife and 
four children, whom his death may very possibly leave destitute, perhaps 
dependent for their bread, while publishers, who have grown rich on his 
writings, roll by in their carriages, and millions who have been instructed 
by them contribute not one farthing to their comfort. But suppose him rich, 
if you please, the justice of the case is unaltered. He is the just owner of 
his own productions as much as though he had made axes or horse-shoes ; and 
the people who refuse to protect his right, ought not to insult him with the 
mockery of thriftless praise. Let us be just, and then generous. Grood 
reader ! if you think our guest ought to be enabled to live by and enjoy the 
fruits of his talents and toil, just put your names to a petition for an Inter- 
national Copyright Law, and then you can take his hand heartily if it cornea 
in your way, and say, if need be, ' I have done what is in my power to pro- 
tect you from robbery !' The passage of this act of long-deferred justice will 
be a greater tribute to his worth and achievements than acres of inflated 
compliments soaked in hogsheads of champagne." 

PROVOCATION. 

A paragraph recommending a provision /or life for the soldiers 
disabled in the Mexican war. 



" Uncle Sam ! you bedazzled old hedge-hog ! don't you see 'glory' is cheap 
fts dirt, only you never get done paying for it ! Forty years hence, your boya 
will be still paying taxes to support the debt you are now piling up, and the 
cripples and other pensioners you are now manufacturing. How much more 
of this will satisfy you V 

PEOVOOATIOI*. 

An accusation of ' malignant falsehood.' 

REPLY. 

" There lives not a man who knows the editor of this paper who can be 
made to believe that we have been guilty of ' malignant falsehood.' 



PREACHING AND PRACTICE. 241 

" We seek no controversy with the Sun ; but, since it chooses to be personal, 
we defy its utmost industry and malice to point out a single act of our life in- 
consistent with integrity and honor. We dare it, in this respect, to do its 
worst !" 

PEOYOCATION. 

This sentence in the Express : " If the editor of the Tribune be- 
lieved a word of what he says, he would convert his profitable 
printing establishment into a Fourier common-stock concern." 

REPLY. 

" If our adviser will just point us to any passage, rule, maxim or precept of 
Fourier (of whom he appears to know so much) which prescribes a pro rata 
division of proceeds among all engaged in producing them, regardless of abil- 
ity, efficiency, skill, experience, etc., we will assent to almost any absurdity 
he shall dictate. 

*' As to ' carrying out his theories of Fourierism,' etc., he (the editor of the 
Tribune) has expended for this specific purpose some thousands of dollars, and 
intends to make the same disposition of more as soon as he has it to expend. 
Whether he ought to be guided by his own judgment or that of the Express 
man respecting the time and manner of thus testifying his faith, he will con- 
sider in duo season. He has never had a dollar which was not the fair product 
of his own downright labor, and for whatever of worldly wealth may accrue 
to him beyond the needs of those dependent on his eflforts he holds himself 
but the steward of a kind Providence, and bound to use it all as shall seem 
most conducive to the good of the Human Race. It is quite probable, how- 
ever, that he will never satisfy the Express that he is either honest, sincere, 
or well-meaning, but that is not material. He has chosen, once for all, to an- 
swer a sort of attack which has become fashionable with a certain class of his 
enemies, and can hardly be driven to notice the like again." 

PROVOCATION. 

An allusion in the Courier and Enquirer to Mr. Greeley's diet, 
littire, socialism, philosophy, etc. 

REPLY. 

"It is true that the editor of the Tribune chooses mainly (not entirely) 

vegetable food ; but he never troubles his readers on the subject ; it does not 

worry them ; why should it conoern the Colonel 7 * * * It is hard 

£br Philosophy that so humble a man shall be made to stand as its exem- 

16 



242 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. 

plar; while Christianity is personified by the here of the Sunday duel with 
Hon. Tom. Marshall ; but such luck will happen. 

"As to our personal appearance, it does seem time that we should say some- 
thing, to stay the flood of nonsense with which the town must by this time ba 
nauseated. Some donkey a while ago, apparently anxious to assail or annoy 
the editor of this paper, and not well knowing with what, originated the story 
of his carelessness of personal appearances ; and since then every blockhead 
of the same disposition and distressed by a similar lack of ideas, has repeated 
and exaggerated the foolery ; until from its origin in the Albany Microscope 
it has sunk down at last to the columns of the Courier and Enquirer, growing 
more absurd at every landing. Yet all this time the object of this silly rail- 
lery has doubtless worn better clothes than two-thirds of those who thus as- 
sailed him — better than any of them could honestly wear, if they paid their 
debts otherwise than by bankruptcy ; while, if they are indeed more cleanly 
than he, they must bathe very thoroughly not less than twice a day. The 
editor of the Tribune is the son of a poor and humble farmer; came to New 
York a minor, without a friend within 200 miles, less than ten dollars in his 
pocket, and precious little besides ; he has never had a dollar from a relative, 
and has for years labored under a load of debt, (thrown on him by others' 
misconduct and the revulsion of 1837,) which he can now just see to the end 
of. Thenceforth he may be able to make a better show, if deemed essential 
by his friends ; for himself, he has not much time or thought to bestow on the 
matter. That he ever affected eccentricity is most untrue ; and certainly no 
costume he ever appeared in would create such a sensation in Broadway as 
that James Watson Webb would have worn but for the clemency of Governor 
Seward, Heaven grant our assailant may never hang with such weight on 
another Whig Executive ! We drop him." 

(Colonel Webb had been sentenced to two years' imprisonment 
for fighting a duel. Governor Seward pardoned him before he had 
served one day of his term.) 

PROVOCATION. 

A charge of * infidelity,' in the Express. 

REPLY. 

" The editor of the Tribune has never been anything else than a believer 
in the Christian Religion, and has for many years been a member of a Chris 
tian Church. He never wrote or uttered a syllable in favor of Infidelity 
But truth is lost on the Express, which can never forgive us the ' Infidel- 
ity ' of circulating a good mf ay more copies. Daily and Weekly, than are 
taken of that paper." 



COL. WEBB SEVERE! r HIT. 243 

PEOVOOATION. 

Letters complainiDg of the Tribune's hostility to the Mexican war 



•' Our faith is strong and clear that we serve our country best by obeying 
our Maker in all things, and that He requires us to bear open, unequivocal 
testimony against every iniquity, however specious, and to expose every lying 
pretense whereby men are instigated to imbrue their hands in each other's 
blood. We do not believe it possible that our country can be prospered in such 
a war as this. It may be victorious ; it may acquire immense accessions of 
territory ; but these victories, these acquisitions, will prove fearful calamities, 
by sapping the morals of our people, inflating them with pride and corrupting 
them with the lust of conquest and of gold, and leading them to look to the 
Commerce of the Indies and the Dominion of the Seas for those substantial 
blessings which follow only in the wake of peaceful, contented Labor. So sure 
as the Universe has a Ruler will every acre of territory we acquire by this 
war prove to our Nation a curse and the source of infinite calamities." 

PEOVOOATION. 

An attempt on the part of Ool. Webb to excite violence against 
the Tribune and its editor. 

EEPLT. 

'* This is no new trick on the part of the Courier. It is not the first nor the 
second time that it has attempted to excite a mob to violence and outrage 
against those whom it hates. In July, 1834, when, owing to its ferocious de- 
nunciations of the Abolitionists, a furious and law-defying mob held virtual 
possession of our city, assaulting dwellings, churches and persons obnoxious to 
its hate, and when the Mayor called out the citizens by Proclamation to assist 
in restoring tranquillity, the Courier (11th July) proclaimed: 

" ' It is time, for the reputation of the city, and perhaps for the welfare of 
themselves, that these Abolitionists and Amalgamationists should know the 
ground on which they stand. They are, we learn, always clamorous with the 
Police for protection, and demand it as a right inherent to their characters as 
American citizens. Now we tell them that, when they openly and publicly, 
outrage public feeling, they have no right to demand protection from the Peo- 
ple they thus insult. When they endeavor to disseminate opinions which, if 
generally imbibed, must infallibly destroy our National Union, and produce 
scenes of blood and carnage horrid to think of; when they thus preach up 
treason and murder, the eegis of the Law indignantly withdraws its shelter 
from them 



244 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. 

* * When they vilify our religion by classing the Redeemer of the world in 
the lowest grade of the human species ; when they debase the noble race from 
which we spring — that race which called civilization into existence, and from 
which have proceeded all the great, the brave, and the good that have ever 
lived — and place it in the same scale as the most stupid, ferocious and cow- 
ardly of the divisions into which the Creator has divided mankind, then they 
place themselves beyond the -pale of all law, for they violate every law, divine 
and human. Ought not, we ask, our City authorities to make them understand 
this ; to tell them that they prosecute their treasonable and beastly plans at 
their own peril T 

'* Such is the man, such the means, by which he seeks to bully Freemen out 
of the rights of Free Speech and Free Thought. There are those who cower 
before his threats and his ruffian appeals to mob violence — here is one who 
never will ! All the powers of Land-jobbing and Slave-jobbing cannot drive 
us one inch from the ground we have assumed of determined and open hostil- 
ity to this atrocious war, its contrivers and abettors. Let those who threaten 
us with assassination understand, once for all, that we pity while we despise 
their baseness." 

PEOVOCATIOX. 

The following, from the Express : " For woman we think the 
fittest place is home, ' sweet home ' — by her own fireside and among 
her own children ; but the Tribune would put her in trowsers, or 
on stilts as a public woman, or tumble her pell-mell into some Fou- 
rier establishment." 

EEPLy. 
The following, from the Express of the same date: "At the Park this even 
ing the graceful Augusta, (whose benefit, last night, notwithstanding the 
weather, was fashionably and numerously attended,) takes her leave of us for 
the present. We can add nothing to what we have already said in praise of 
this charming artist's performances, farther than to express the hope that it 
may not be long ere we are again permitted to see her upon our boards. As 
in beauty, grace, delicacy, and refinement, she stands alone in her profession, 
BO in private life she enjoys, and most justly, too, the highest reputation in all 
her relations." 

PROVOCATION. 

To what a low degree of debasement must the Coons have indeed 
fallen, when even so notorious a reprobate as Nick Biddle is disgust- 
ed with tkem. — Plebeian. 

REPLY. 

" All the ' notorious reprobates ' in the country were * disgusted ' with the 
Whigs long ago. They have found their proper resting-place in the embraces 
of Loco-Focoism." 



EXPEDIENCY. 245 

PEOVOOATION". 

Our -whole national debt is less than sixty days' interest on that 
^f Great Britain, yet, with all our resources the English call ua 
*>ackrupt ! — Boston Post. 

REPLY, 

" But England pays her interest — large as it is ; and if our States will not 
vay even their debts, small as they are, why should they not be called 
tankrupt 7" 

PEOVOOATION, 

A charge that the Tribune sacrified the Right to the Expedient. 

EEPLY. 

" Old stories very often have a forcible application to present times. The 
loUowing anecdote we met with lately in an exchange paper : 

" ' How is it, John, that you bring the wagon home in such a condition V 

" * 1 broke it driving over a stump.' 

" « Where V 

" ' Back in the woods, half a mile or so.' 

" * But why did you run against the stump 1 Could n't you see how to drive 
8ti>aifeht V 

" ' I did drrve straight, sir, and that is the very reason that I drove over it 
The stump was directly in the middle of the road.' 

" ' Why, theu, dia you not go round it V 

" * Because, siFj the stump had no right in the middle of the road, and I had 
a right in it.' 

" ' True, Jonn, the stump ought not to have been in the road, but I wonder 
that you were so foolish as not to consider that it was there, and that it 
was stronger than your wagon.' 

<« < Why, father, do you think that I am always going to yield up my 
rights'? Not I. I am determined to stick up to them, come what will.' 

*' ' But what is the use, John, of standing up to rights, when you only get a 
greater wrong by so doing V 

" ' I shall stand up for them at all hazards.' 

" ' Well, John, all I have to say is this — hereafter you must furnish your 
own wagon." 

PEOVOOATIOW. 

The applicatioi of the word 'Bah' to one of the Tribune's ar- 
guments. 

EEPLY. 

" We are quite willing that every animal should express its emotions in the 
language natural to it.^* 



246 EDITORIAL REPARTEES. 

PROVOCATION. 

Conservatism in general. 



" The stubborn conservative is like a horse on board a ferry-boat. The horse 
may back, but the boat moves on, and the animal with it." 

PEOVOOATION. 

A correspondent, to illustrate his position, that slave-owners have 
a right to move with their slaves into new territories, compared 
those territories to a village common, upon which every valagei 
has an equal right to let his animals graze. 

REPLY. 

" No, sir. A man may choose to pasture his geese upon the common, which 
would spoil the pasture for cows and horses. The other villagers would bo 
right in keeping out the geese, even by violence." 

And thus the Tribune warred, and warring, prospeted. Kepeat- 
ed supplements, ever-increasing circulation, the frequent omission 
of advertisements, all testified that a man may be independent in 
the expression of the most unpopular opinions, and yet not be 
'starved into silence.' 

One more glance at the three volumes froia which most of the 
above passages are taken, and we accompany our hero to new 
scenes. In the Fifty-four-forty-or-Fight controversy, the Tribune 
of course took the side of peace and moderation. Its obituary of 
General Jackson in 1845, being not wholly eulogistic, called forth 
angry comment from the democratic press. In the same year, it 
gave to the advocates respectively of phonography, the phonetic 
system, and the magnetic telegraph, an ample hearing, and occa- 
sional encouragement. In 1846, its Reporters were excluded from 
the gallery of the House of Representatives, because a correspond- 
ent stated, jocularly, that Mr. Sawyer, of Ohio, lunched in the 
House on sausages. The weak member has since been styled Sau- 
sage Sawyer — a name which he will put off only with his mortal 
coil. Throughout the Mexican war, the Tribune gave all due honor 
to the gallantry of the soldiers who fought its battles, on one occa- 
Bion defending Gen. Pierce from the charge of cowardice and boast- 
ing. In 1847, the editor made the tour of the great lake country, 



WAGER WITH THE HERALD. 



247 



going to the uttermost parts of Lake Superior, and writing a series 
of letters which revealed the charms and the capabihties of that 
region. In the same year it gave a complete exposition of the so- 
called ' Revelations' of Mr. Andrew Jackson Davis, but without ex- 
pressing any opinion as to their supernatural origin. War followed, 
of course. To Mr. Whitney's Pacific Railroad scheme it assigned 
BuflScient space. Agassiz' lectures were admirably reported, with 
from ten to twenty woodcuts in the report of each lecture. Gen. 
Taylor's nomination to the presidency it descried in the distance, 
and opposed vehemently. 

The last event of the seventh volume was the dispute with the 
Herald on the subject of the comparative circulation of the two 
papers. The Tribune challenged the Herald to an investigation by 
an impartial committee, whose report each paper should publish, 
and the losing party to give a hundred dollars to each of the two 
orphan asylums of the city. The Herald accepted. The report of 
the committee was as follows : 

"The undersigned having been designated by the publishers of the New 
York Herald and New York Tribune, respectively, to examine jointly and re- 
port for publication the actual circulation of these two journals, have made 
the scrutiny required, and now report, that the average circulation of the two 
papers during the four weeks preceding the agreement which originated this 
investigation, was as follows : 

JVew York Herald. l J^ew York Tribune. 
Average Daily circulation 16,71 1| Average Daily circulation 11,455 



Weekly " ...... .11,455 

Presidential " 780 



Total 28,946 



' Weekly " 15,780 

Semi- Weekly 960 

Total 28,195 



*' The quantity of paper used by each establishment, during the four weeks 
above specified, was as follows : By the New York Herald, 975 reams for the 
Daily ; 95i reams for the Weekly, and 5 reams for the Presidential. By the 
New York Tribune, 573 reams for the Daily ; 131i reams for the Weekly, and 
16 reams for the Semi- Weekly. 
" We therefore decide that the Herald has the larger average circulation. 

" James G. Wilson, 
"Daniel H. Megte." 

The Tribune paid the money, but protested that the ' Presidential 
Herald.,' and, above all, the Sunday Herald, ought to have been ex- 
cluded from the comparison. 



CHAPTER XX. 

1848! 

RevoltvMons in Europe—The Tribune exults— The Slievegammon letters— Taylor and 
Fillmore— Course of the Tribune— Horace Greeley at Vauxhall Garden— Hit 
election to Congress. 

The Year of Hope ! You have not forgotten, reader, the 
thrill, the tumult, the ecstasy of joy with which, on the morning 
of March 28th, 1848, you read in the morning papers these electric 
and transporting capitals. Regale your eyes with them once 
more : 

FIFTEEN DAYS LATER FROM EUROPE. 



ARRIVAL OF THE CAMBRIA. 



HIGHLY IMPORTANT NEWS! 



ABDICATION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE! 



A REPUBLIC PROCLAIMED. 



THE EOYAL FAMILY HAVE LEFT PARIS. 



ASSAULT OJ\r THE PALAIS ROYAL. 



GREAT LOSS OF LIFE, 



COMMUNICATION WITH THE ULTERIOR CUT OFF. 



RESIGNATION OF MINISTERS. 



REVOLT IN AMIENS-PARIS IN ALARM. 



What history is condensed in these few words ? Why has not 
that history been faithfully and minutely recorded, as a warning 
and a guide to the men of future revolutions ? Why has no one 
deduced from the events of the last eighty years a science of Rev- 
olution, laid down the principles upon which success is possible, 
probable, certain ? The attempt, and not the deed confounded Ea- 

248 



THE SLIEVEGAMMON LETTERS. 



249 



rope, and condemned her to more years of festering ttagnation. 
" As I looked out of the window of my hotel, in Boulogne," says 
a recent traveler, " it seemed to me that all the men were soldiers, 
and that women did all the work." How pitiful I How shameful! 
A million of men under arms ! The army, the elite of the nation I 
One man of every ten to keep the- other nine in order / O ! in- 
finite and dastardly imbecility ! 

I need not say that the Tribune plunged into the European con- 
tests headlong. It chronicled every popular triumph with exulta- 
tion unbounded. One of the editors of the paper, Mr. Charles A. 
Dana, went to Europe to procure the most authentic and direct in- 
formation of events as they transpired, and his letters over the 
well-known initials, ' C. A. D.,' were a conspicuous and valuable 
feature of the year. Mr. Greeley wrote incessantly on the subject, 
blending advice with exhortation, jubilation with warning. In be- 
half of Ireland, his sympathies were most strongly aroused, and he 
accepted a place in the " Directory of the Friends of Ireland," to the 
funds of which he contributed liberally. 

It was in August of this year, that the famous " Slievegammon " 
letters were published. As frequent allusions to this amusing affair 
are still made in the papers, it may as well be explained here. The 
country was on the tiptoe of expectation for important news of the 
Irish rebellion. The steamer arrived. Among the despatches of 
the Tribune were three letters from Dublin, giving news not con- 
tained in the newspapers. The Tribune " without vouching for the 
accuracy of the statements," made haste to publish the letters, 
with due glorification. This is one of them : 

" Dublin, Aug. 3, 1848. 

" No newspaper here dare tell the truth concerning the battle of Slieve- 
namon, but from all we can learn, the people have had a great victory. Qen. 
Macdonald, the commander of the British forces, is killed, and six thousand 
troops are killed and wounded. The road for three miles is covered with the 
dead. We also have the inspiring intelligence that Kilkenny and Limerick 
have been taken by the people. The people of Dublin have gone in thousands 
to assist in the country. Mr. John B. Dillon was wounded in both legs. Mr. 
Meagher was also wounded in both arms. It is generally expected that Dub- 
Kn will rise and attack the jails on Sunday night, {Aug. 6.) 

" All the people coming in on the Railroad are cautioned and commanded 



250 THE YEAR JjF HOPE. 

not to tell the cews. When the cars arrive, thousands of the Dublin people 
are waiting for the intelligence. The police drive away those who are seen 
asking questions. Why all this care of the government to prevent the spread 
of intelligence, unless it be that something has happened which they want 
kept as a secret 1 If they had obtained a victory they would be very apt to 
let us know it. 

" We are informed that the 3d Bluffs (a regiment of Infantry) turned and 
fought with the people. The 31st regiment, at Athlone, have also declared for 
the people, and two regiments have been sent to disarm them. 

" The mountain of Slievenamon is almost inaccessible. There is but one 
approach to it. It is said to be well supplied with provisions. It was a glo- 
rious place for our noble Smith O'Brien to select. It is said he has sixty 
thousand men around him, with a considerable supply of arms, ammunition, 
and cannon. In '98, the rebels could not be taken from Slievenamon until 
they chose to come out themselves. 

" A lady who came to town yesterday, and who had passed the scene of bat- 
tle, said that for three miles the stench arising from the dead men and horses 
was almost suffocating. 

" Wexford was quite peaceable till recently — but the government in its mad- 
ness proclaimed it, and now it is in arms to assist the cause. Now that we are 
fairly and spiritedly at it, are we not worthy of help 7 What are you doing 
for us 7 People of America, Ireland stretches her hand to you for assistance. 
Do not let us be disappointed. B." 

For a day or two, the Irish and the friends of Ireland exulted ; 
but when the truth became known, their note was sadly changed, 
and the Tribune was widely accused of having originated a hoax. 
"Whereas, it was only too innocent! 

The most remarkable feature of the affair was, that the letters 
were written in good faith. The mind of Dublin was in a dehrium 
of excitement, rumors of the wildest description were readily be- 
lieved, and the writer of the Slievegammon letters was as completely 
deceived as any of his readers. It need only be added, that Hor- 
ace Greeley never saw the letters till he saw them in print in the 
columns of the Tribune ; when they appeared, he was touring in 
Uie uttermost parts of Lake Superior. 

This was the year, too, of the Taylor and Fillmore 'campaign;' 
from which, however, the Tribune held obstinately aloof till late in 
the summer. Mr. Greeley had opposed the nomination of Gen. 
Taylor from the day it began to be agitated. He opposed it at 
the nominating convention in Philadelphia, and used all his influ- 



THE SLIEVEGAMMON LETTERS. 251 

ence tc» secure the nomination of Henry Clay. As soon as the final 
ballot decided the contest in favor of Taylor, lie rushed from the 
hall in disgust, and, on his return to New York, could not sufficient- 
ly overcome his repugnance to the ticket, to print it, as the custom 
then was, at the head of his editorial columns. He ceased to oppose 
the election of Gen. Taylor, hut would do nothing to promote it. 
The list of candidates does not appear, in the usual place in the Tri- 
bune, as the regular 'Whig nominations,' till the twenty -ninth of 
September, and even then, our editor consented to its appearance 
with great reluctance. Two days before, a whig meeting had been 
held at Vauxhall Garden, which Mr. Greeley chanced to attend. 
He was seen by the crowd, and after many, and very vociferous 
calls, he made a short address, to the following effect : 

" I trust, fellow-citizens, I shall never be afraid nor ashamed to meet a 
Whig assemblage and express my sentiments on the political questions of the 
day. And although I have had no intimation till now that my presence here 
was expected or desired, I am the more ready to answer your call since I have 
heard intimations, even from this stand, that there was some mystery in my 
course to be cleared up — some astounding revelation with regard to it to be 
expected. And our eloquent friend from Kentucky even volunteered, in his 
remarks, to see me personally and get me right. If there be indeed any 
mystery in the premises, I will do my best to dispel it. But I have, in truth, 
nothing to reveal. I stated in announcing Gen. Taylor's nomination, the day 
after it was made, that I would support if I saw no other way to defeat the 
election of Lewis Cass. That pledge I have ever regarded. I shall faithfully 
redeem it. And, since there is now no chance remaining that any other than 
Gen. Taylor or Gen. Cass can be elected, I shall henceforth support the ticket 
nominated at Philadelphia, and do what I can for its election. 

"But I have not changed my opinion of the nomination of Gen. Taylor. I 
believe it was unwise and unjust. For Gen. Taylor, personally, I have ever 
spoken with respect ; but I believe a candidate could and should have been 
chosen mora deserving, more capable, more popular. I cannot pretend to sup- 
port him with enthusiasm, for I do not feel any. 

"Yet while I frankly avow that I would do little merely to make Gen. Tay- 
lor President, I cannot forget that -others stand or fall with him, and that 
among them are Fillmore and Fish anu Patterson, with whom I have battled 
for the Whig cause ever since I was entitled to vote, and to whom I cannot 
now be unfaithful. I cannot forget that if Gen. Taylor be elected wo shall in 
all probability have a Whig Congress; if Gen. Cass is elected, a Loco-Foco 
Congress. Who car ask me to throw away all these because of my objections 
to Gen. Taylor? 



252 



THE YEAR. OF HOPE. 



"And then the question of Free Soil, what shall be the fate of that! 1 
presume there are here some Free Soil men ['Yes! Yes! all Free Soil !']•-! 
mean those to whom the question of extending or restricting Slavery out- 
weighs all other considerations. I ask these what hope they have of keeping 
Slavery out of California and New- Mexico with Gen. Cass President, and a 
Loco-Focc Congress 1 I have none. And I appeal to every Free Soil Whig 
to ask himself this question — ' How would South Carolina and Texas wish yott 
to vote V Can you doubt that your bitter adversaries would rejoice to hear 
that you had resolved to break off from the Whig party and permit Gen Cass 
to be chosen President, with an obedient Congress 7 T cannot doubt it. And 
I cannot believe that a wise or worthy course, which my bitterest adversaries 
would gladly work out for me. 

" Of Gen. Taylor's soundness on this question, I feel no assurance, and can 
give none. But I believe him clearly pledged by his letters to leave legisla- 
tion to Congress, and not attempt to control by his veto the policy of the coun- 
try. I believe a Whig Congress will not consent to extend Slavery, and that a 
Whig President will not go to war with Congress and the general spirit of his 
party. So believing, I shall support the Whig nominations with a view to the 
triumph of Free Soil, trusting that the day is not distant when an amend- 
ment of the Federal Constitution will give the appointment of Postmasters 
and other local officers to the People, and strip the President of the enormous 
and anti- republican patronage which now causes the whole Political action of 
the country to hinge upon its Presidential Elections. Such are my views; 
such will be my course. I trust it will no longer be pretended that there is 
any mystery about them." 

This speech was received with particular demonstrations of ap- 
proval. It was felt that a serious obstacle to Gen. Taylor's success 
was removed, and that now the whig party would march on in an 
inbroken phalanx to certain victory. 

The day which secured its triumph elected Horace Greeley to ft 
ieat in the House of Representatives, which the death of a member 
had made vacant. He was elected for one session only, and that, 
the short one of three months. How he came to be nominated has 
been explained by himself in a paragraph on the corruptive machin- 
ery of our primary elections : " An editor of the Tribune was once 
nominated through that machinery. So he was — to serve ninety 
days in Ooagress — and he does n't feel a bit proud of it. But let 
it be considered that the Convention was not chosen to nominate 
him, and did not (we presume) think of doing any such thing, 



HIS ELECTIOIT TO CONGRESS. 



253 



nntil it had unanimously nominated another, who unexpectedly de- 
olined, and then one of us was pitched upon to supply his place. 
We don't know whether the Primaries were as corrupt then as now 
or not ; our impression is that they have been growing steadily 
worse and worse — but no matter — let us have them reformed." 

His nomination introduced great spirit into the contest, and he 
was voted for with enthusiasm, particularly by two classes, work- 
ing-men and thinking-men. His majority over his opponent was 
3,177, the whole number of votes being 5,985. His majority con- 
siderably exceeded that of Gen. Taylor in the same wards. At 
the same election Mr. Brooks, of the Express, was elected to a seat 
in the House, and his ' Card' of thanksgiving to those who had 
voted for him, elicited or suggested the following from Mr. 
Greeley : 

" TO THE ELECTORS OF THE VITH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT. 

•' The undersigned, late a candidate for Congress, respectfully returns his 
thanks — first, to his political opponents for the uniform kindness and considera- 
tion with which he was treated by them throughout the canvass, and the un- 
solicited suffrages with which he was honored by many of them ; secondly, to 
the great mass of his political brethren, for the ardent, enthusiastic and effect- 
ive support which they rendered him ; and, lastly, to that small portion of 
the Whig electors who saw fit to withhold from him their votes, thereby 
nearly or quite neutralizing the support he received from the opposite party. 
Claiming for himself the right to vote for or against any candidate of his 
party as his own sense of right and duty shall dictate, he very freely accords 
to all others the same liberty, without offense or inquisition. 

" During the late canvass I have not, according to my best recollection, 
spoken of myself, and have not replied in any way to any sort of attack or 
imputation. I have in no manner sought to deprecate the objections, nor to 
soothe the terrors of that large and most influential class who deem my ad- 
vocacy of Land Reform and Social Re-organization synonymous with In- 
fidelity and systematic Robbery. To have entered upon explanations or vin- 
dications of my views on these subjects in the crisis of a great National 
struggle, which taxed every energy, and demanded every thought, comported 
neither with my leisure nor my inclination. 

'• Neither have I seen fit at any time to justify nor allude to my participa- 
tion in the eflPorts made here last summer to aid the people of Ireland in their 
anticipated struggle for Liberty and Independence. I shall not do so now. 
What I did then, in behalf of the Irish millions, I stand ready to do again, 



254 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

• 

80 far as my means will permit, when a similar opportunity, with a like pros 
pect of success, is presented — and not for them only, but for any equally op- 
pressed and suflFering people on the face of the earth. If any ' extortion and 
plunder' were contrived and perpetrated in the meetings for Ireland at 
Vauxhall last season, I am wholly unconscious of it, though I ought to be aa 
well informed as to the alleged ' extortion and plunder' as most others, whether 
my information were obtained in the character of conspirator or that of vic- 
tim. I feel impelled, however, by the expressions employed in Mr. Brooks's 
card, to state that I have found nothing like an inclination to ' extortion and 
plunder' in the councils of the leading friends of Ireland in this city, and no- 
thing like a suspicion of such baseness among the thousands who sustained and 
cheered them in their efforts. All the suspicions and imputations to which 
those have been subjected, who freely gave their money and their exer- 
tions in aid of the generous though ineffectual effort for Ireland's liberation, 
have originated with those who never gave that cause a prayer or a shilling, 

and have not yet traveled beyond them. 

" Respectfully, 

"Horace Gr£elet. 
" New York. Nov. 8. 1848." 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

His objects as a Member of Congress— His first acts — The Chaplain hypocrisy — Th« 
Laud Reform Bill— Distributing the Documents— Offers a novel Resolution— Thr 
Mileage Expos6 — Congressional delays — Explosion in the House— Mr. Turner's ora 
tion— Mr. Greeley defends himself— The Walker Tariff— Congress in a pet— Speech 
at the Printers' Festival— The House in good humor — Traveling dead-head — Per- 
sonal explanations — A dry haul — The amendment game— Congressional dignity — 
Battle of the books— The Recruiting System— The last night of the Session— The 
' usual gratuity' — The Inauguration Ball — Farewell to his constituents. 

In the composition of this work, I have, as a rule, abstained from 
the impertinence of panegyric, and most of the few sentences of 
an applausive nature which escaped my pen were promptly erased 
on the first perusal of the passages which they disfigured. Of a 
good action, the simplest narrative is the best panegyric ; of a bad 
a'^tJon, the best justification is the whole truth about it. Therefore, 



HIS OBJECTS AS A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. 255 

thongn Horace Greeley's career in Congress is tliat part of his life 
which I regard with unmingled admiration, and thongli t/ie conduct 
of his enemies during that period fills me with inexpressible disgust, 
I shall present here little more than a catalogue of his acts and en- 
deavors while he held a place in the National bear-garden. 

He seems to have kept two objects in view, during those three 
turbulent and exciting months : 1, to do his duty as a Representative 
of the People ; 2, to let the people know exactly and fully what 
manner of place the House of Representatives is, by what methods 
their business is kept from being done, and under what pretexts 
their money is plundered. The first of these objects kept him con- 
stantly in his place on the floor of the House. The second he ac- 
complished by daily letters to the Tribune, written, not at his desk 
in the House, but in his room before and after each day's hubbub. 
It will be convenient to arrange this chapter in the form of a jour- 
nal. 

Dec. 4th. This was Monday, the first day of the session. Horace 
Greeley ' took the oaths and his seat.' 

Dec. 5th. He gave notice of his intention to bring in a bill to 
discourage speculation in the public lands, and establish homesteads 
upon the same. 

Dec. 6th. He wrote a letter to the Tribune, in which he gave 
his first impressions of the House, and used some plain English. 
He spoke strongly upon the dishonesty of members drawing pay 
and yet not giving attendance at the early sessions, though the 
House had a hundred bills ready for conclusive action, and every 
day lost at the outset insures the defeat of ten bills at the close. 
As a specimen of plain English take this : 

" On the third day, the Senate did not even succeed in forming a quorum , 
out of fifty-seven or eight members, who are all sure to be in for their pay 
and mileage, only twenty-nine appeared in their seats ; and the annual hy- 
pocrisy of electing a chaplain had to go over and waste another day. If either 
House had a chaplain who dare preach to its members what they ought to hear 
— of their faithlessness, their neglect of duty, their iniquitous waste of time, 
and robbery of the public by taking from the treasury money which they have 
not even attempted to earn — then there would be some sense in the chaplain 
business : but any ill-bred Nathan or Elijah who should undertake such a job 



256 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

would be kicked out in short order. So the chaplaincy remains a thing of 
grimace and mummery, nicely calculated to help some flockless and complai 
■iant shepherd to a few hundred dollars, and impose on devout simpletons as 
exalted notion of the piety of Congress. Should not the truth be spoken 7 
******** 

" But in truth the great sorrow is, that so many of the Members of Con- 
gress, as of men in high station elsewhere, are merely dexterous jugglers, or 
the tools of dexterous jugglers, with the cup and balls of politics, shuffled into 
responsible places as a reward for past compliances, or in the hope of being 
there made useful to the inventors and patentees of their intellectual and 
moral greatness. To such men, the idea of anybody's coming to Congress for 
anything else than the distinction and the plunder, unless it be in the hope of 
intriguing their way up to some still lazier and more lucrative post, is so irre- 
sistibly comic — such an exhibition of jolly greenness, that they cannot contem- 
plate it without danger of explosion." 

Dec. IZth. Mr. Greeley introduced the Land Reform bill, of 
which he had given notice. It provided : 

1. That any citizen, and any alien who had declared his intention 
of becoming a citizen, may file a pre-emption claim to 160 acres of 
Public Land, settle upon it, improve it, and have the privilege of 
buying it at any time within seven years of filing the claim, at the 
Government price of $1 25 per acre : provided, that he is not the 
owner or claimant of any other real estate. 

2. That the Land office where a claim is filed, shall issue a War- 
rant of Pre-emption, securing the claimant in seven years' possess- 
ion. 

8. That, after five years' occupancy, a warrant-holder who makes 
oath of his intention to reside on and cultivate his land for life shall 
become the owner of any forty acres of his claim which he may 
select; the head of a family eighty acres. 

4. That the price of public lands, when not sold to actual settlers, 
shall be five dollars per acre. 

5. "^hat false affidavits, made to procure land under the provisions 
of this bill, shall be punished by three years' hard labor in a State 
prison, by a fine not exceeding $1,000, and by the loss of the land 
fraudulently obtained. 

Dec. 16/A. The following notice appeared in the Tribune: 

" It reference to many requests for copies of the President's Message and 



UFFERS A N^VEL RESOLUTION. 257 

accompanying Documents, I desire to state that such Message and Documenti 
are expected to cover twelve to fourteen hundred printed octavo pages, and 
to include three maps, the engraving of which will probably delay the publi- 
cation for two or three weeks yet. I shall distribute my share of them as soon 
as possible, and make them go as far as they will ; but I cannot satisfy half 
the demands upon me. As each Senator will have nearly two hundred copies, 
while Representatives have but about sixty each, applications to Senators, 
especially from the smaller States, are obviously the most promising." 

Dec. l^tli. Mr. Greeley offered the following resolution in the 
House : 

" Resolved, That the Secretary of the Navy be requested to inquire into 
and report upon the expediency and feasibility of temporarily employing the 
whole or a portion of our national vessels, now on the Pacific station, in the 
transportation, at moderate rates, of American citizens and their eflFects from 
Panama and the Mexican ports on the Pacific to San Francisco in California." 

This was the year of the gold fever. The fate of the above reso- 
lution may be given in its proposer's own words 

"Monday," he wrote, "was expressly a resolution day; and (the order 
commencing at Ohio) it was about 2 o'clock before New York was called, and 
I had a chance to offer the foregoing. It was received, but could not be acted 
on except by unanimous consent (which was refused) until it shall have laid 
over one day — when of course it will never be reached again. When the 
States had been called through, I rose and asked the House to consider the 
above as modified so as to have the inquiry made by its own Naval Commit- 
tee instead of the Secretary of the Navy — thus bringing its immediate consid- 
eration within the rules. No use — two or three on the other side sang out 
* Object,' ' Object,' and the resolution went over — as all resolutions which any 
member indicates a purpose to debate must do. So the resolution cannot bo 
reached again this Session." 

Dec. l^tTi. Mr. Greeley made what the reporters styled 'a plain 
and forcible speech,' on, the tariff, in which he animadverted upon 
a passage of the Message, wherein the President had alluded to 
manufacturers as an ' aristocratic class, and one that claimed exclu- 
sive privileges.' Mr. Greeley walked into the President. 

Dbc. '2,'2,d. On this day appeared in the Tribune, the famona 
Congressional Mileage Expose. The history of this expose is 
briefly related by Mr. Greeley, in the Whig Almanac for 1850. 
17 



258 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

" Early in December, I called on the Sergeant-at-Arms, for some money on 
Account, he being paymaster of the House. The Schedule used by that officer 
was placed before me, showing the amount of mileage respectively accorded 
to every member of the House. Many of these amounts struck me as ex- 
cessive, and I tried to recollect if any publication of all the allowances in a 
like case had ever been made through the journals, but could not remember 
any such publicity. On inquiry, I was informed that the amounts were regu- 
larly published in a certain document entitled ' The Public Accounts,' of which 
no considerable number was printed, and wliich was obviously not intended 
for popular distribution. [It is even omitted in this document for the year 
1848, printed since I published my expose, so that I can now find it in no pub- 
lic document whatever.] I could not remember that I had ever seen a copy, 
though one had been obtained and used by my assistant in making up last 
year's Almanac. It seemed to me, therefore, desirable that the facts should 
be brought to the knowledge of the public, and I resolved that it should be 
done. 

" But how ? To have picked out a few of what seemed to me the most fla- 
grant cases of overcharge, and print these alone, would be to invite and secure 
the reputation of partiality, partisanship, and personal animosity. No other 
course seemed so fair as to print the mileage of each member, with necessary 
elucidations. I accordingly employed an ex-clerk in one of the departments, 
and instructed him to make out a tabular expose as follows : 

" 1. Name of each member of the House ; 

" 2. Actual distance from his residence to Washington by the shortest post- 
route ; 

" 3. Distance for which he is allowed and paid mileage ; 

•' 4. Amount of mileage received by him ; 

" 5. Excess of mileage so received over what would have been if the dis- 
tance had been computed by the shortest or most direct mail-route. 

" The expose was made out accordingly, and promptly forwarded to the Tri- 
bune, in which it appeared " 

In the remarks which introduced the tabular statement, Mr 
Greeley expressly and pointedly laid the blame of the enormous ex- 
cess to the law. "Let no man," he said "jump at the conclusion 
that this excess has been charged and received contrary to law. 
The fact is otherwise. The members are all honorable men — if any 
Irreverent infidel should doubt it, we can silence him by referring 
to the prefix to their names in the newspapers, and we presume 
each has charged just what the law allows him. That law ex- 
pressly says that each shall receive eight dollars for every twenty 
miles traveled in coming to and returning from Congress, ' by tlie 



TUE MILEAGE EXPOSfi. 259 

asually traveled route;' and of course if the route usually traveled 
from California to "Washington is around Cape Horn, or the mem- 
bers from that embryo State shall choose to think it is — they will 
each be entitled to charge some $12,000 mileage per session, accord- 
ly. We assume that each has charged precisely what the law al- 
lows him, and thereupon we press home the question — Ought not 
THAT LAW to he amended V 

It appeared from the statement, that the whole number of " cir- 
cuitous miles" charged was 183031, which, at forty cents a mile, 
amounted to $73,492 60, With about twelve exceptions, it showed 
that every member of the Senate and House had drawn more mile- 
age than he ought to have been legally entitled to, the excess vary- 
ing in amount from less than two dollars to more than a thousand 
dollars. Viewed merely as a piece of editorship, this mileage ex- 
pose was the best hit ever made by a New York paper. The effect 
of it upon the town was immediate and immense. It flew upon 
the wings of the country press, and became, in a few days, the 
talk of the nation. Its effect upon Congress, and upon the subse- 
quent congressional career of its author, we shall see in a moment. 

Dec. 23^2. Mr. Greeley wrote a letter to the Tribune, in which 
he explained the maneuvering by which Congress, though it can- 
not legally adjourn over for more than three consecutive days, 
genemlly contrives to be idle during the whole of the Christmas 
holidays ; i. e. from a day or two before Christmas, to a day or two 
after New Year's. "I was warned," he wrote, "when going to 
Baltimore last evening, that I might as well keep on to New York, 
as nothing would be done till some time in January. But I came 
back, determined to see at least how it was done." It was ' done' 
by making two bites at the cherry, adjourning first from Saturday 
to Wednesday ; and, after a little show of work on Wednesday, 
Thursday and Friday, adjourning again till after New Year's day. 
Mr. Greeley spoke in opposition to the adjournment, and demanded 
the yeas and nays ; but they were refused, and the ^rst bite was 
consummatdd. " The old soldiers" of the House were too much for 
him, he said ; but he took care to print the names of those who 
voted for the adjournment. 

Dec. 2^th. T 3-day the pent-up rage of Congress at the Mileage 



260 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

Expos6, -which had been fermenting for three days, burst forth ; and 
the gentleman who knocked out the bung, so to speak, was no other 
than Mr. Sawyer, of Ohio, Mr. Sausage Sawyer of the Tribune. 
Mr. Sawyer was ' down' in the Expose for an excess of $281 60, 
and he rose to a ' question of privilege.' A long and angry de- 
bate ensued, first upon the question whether the Expose could be 
debated at all ; and secondly, if it could, what should be done about 
it. It was decided, after much struggle and turmoil, that it was a 
proper subject of discussion, and Mr. Turner, of Illinois, whose excess 
amounted to the interesting sum of $998 40, moved a series of 
resolutions, of which the following was the most important : 

" Resolved, That a publication made in the New York Tribune on the 
day of December, 1848, in which the mileage of members is set forth and 
commented on, be referred to a Committee, with instructions to inquire 
into and report whether said publication does not amount, in substance, to an 
allegation of fraud against most of the members of this House in this matter 
of their mileage ; and if, in the judgment of the Committee, it does amount to 
an allegation of fraud, then to inquire into it, and report whether that allega- 
tion is true or false." 

The speech by which Mr. Turner introduced his resolutions was 
not conceived in the most amiable spirit, nor delivered with that 
'ofty composure which, it is supposed, should characterize the elo- 
cution of a legislator. These sentences from it will suflSce for a 
specimen : 

" He now wished to call the attention of the House particularly to these 
charges made by the editor of the New York Tribune, most, if not all, of which 
charges he intended to show were absolutely false ; and that the individual 
who made them had either been actuated by the low, groveling, base, and 
malignant desire to represent the Congress of the nation in a false and un- 
enviable light before the country and the world, or that he had been actuated 
by motives still more base — by the desire of acquiring an ephemeral notoriety, 
by blazoning forth to the world what the writer attempted to show was fraud. 
The whole article abounded in gross errors and willfully false statements, and 
was evidently prompted by motives as base, unprincipled and corrupt as ever 
actuated an individual in wielding his pen for the public press. 

" Perhaps the gentleman (he begged pardon), or rather the individual, per- 
haps the thing, that penned that article was not aware that his (Mr. T.'s) por- 
tion of the country wa.s not cut up by railroads and traveled by stage-coaches 



EXPLOSION IN THE HOUSE. 261 

»nd other direct means of public conveyance, like the omnibuses in the City of 
New York, between all points ; they had no other channel of communication 
except the mighty lakes or the rivers of the West ; he could not get here in 
any other way. The law on the subject of Mileage authorized the members 
CO charge upon the most direct usually-traveled route. Now, he ventured the 
assertion that there was not an individual in his District who ever camo to 
this city, or to any of the North-easteru cities, who did not come by the way 
of the lakes or the rivers. 

" He did not know but he was engaged in a very small business. A gentle- 
man near him suggested that the writer of this article would not be believed 
anyhow ; that, therefore, it was no slander. But his constituents, living two 
or three thousand miles distant, might not be aware of the facts, and therefore 
it was that he had deemed it necessary to repel the slanderous charges and 
imputations of fraud, so far as they concerned him." 

Other honorable gentlemen followed, and discoursed eloquent dis- 
cord in a similar strain. Mr. Greeley sat with unruffled composure 
and heard himself vilified for some hours without attempting to 
reply. At length, in a pause of the storm, he arose and gave no- 
tice, that when the resolutions were disposed of he should rise to a 
privileged question. The following sprightly conversation ensued: 

" Mr. Thompson, of Indiana, moved that the resolutions be laid on the table. 

" The Yeas and Nays were asked and ordered ; and, being taken, were— 
Yeas 28, Nays 128. 

** And the question recurring on the demand for the previous question : 

" Mr. Fries inquired of the Speaker whether the question was susceptible 
of division. 

'•The Speaker said that the question could be taken separately on each res- 
olution. 

"A number of members here requested Mr. Evans to withdraw the demand 
for the previous question (i. e. permit Mr. Greeley to speak). 

*' Mr. Evans declined to withdraw the motion, and desired to state the rea- 
son why he did so. The reason was, that the gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Greeley] had spoken to an audience to which the members of this House could 
not speak. If the gentleman wished to assail any member of this House, let 
him do so here. 

'• The Speaker interposed, and was imperfectly heard, but was understoofl 
to say that it was out of order to refer personally to gentlemen on this floor. 

*' Mr. Evans said he would refer to the editor of the Tribune, and he insist- 
ed that the gentleman was not entitled to reply. 

[" Loud cries from all parts of the House, ' Let him speak,' with mingling 
dissent.] 



262 THKEE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

"The question was then taken on the demand for the previous question. 

" But the House refused to second it. 

" Mr. Greeley, after alluding to the comments that had been made upon the 
article in the Tribune relative to the subject of Mileage, and the abuse which 
had notoriously been practiced relating to it, said he had heard no gentleman 
quote one word in that article imputing an illegal charge to any member of 
this House, imputing anything but a legal, proper charge. The whole ground 
of the argument was this : Ought not the law to be changed? Ought not the 
mileage to be settled by the nearest route, instead of what was called the 
usually-traveled route, which authorized a gentleman coming from the center 
of Ohio to go around by Sandusky, Albany, New York, Philadelphia, and 
Baltimore, and to charge mileage upon that route. He did not object to any 
gentleman's taking that course if he saw fit ; but was that the route upon 
which the mileage ought to be computed 7 

" Mr. Turner interposed, and inquired if the gentleman wrote that article? 

" Mr. Greeley replied that the introduction to the article on mileage was writ- 
tei- oy himself; the transcript from the books of this House and from the ac- 
counts of the Senate was made by a reporter, at his direction. That reporter, 
who was formerly a clerk in the Post-Oflfice Department, [Mr. Douglass How- 
ard,] had taken the latest book in the Department, which contained the dis- 
tances of the several post-ofBces in the country from Washington ; and from 
that book he had got — honestly, he knew, though it might not have been en- 
tirely accurate in an instance or two — the oflBcial list of the distances of the 
several post-offices from this city. In jevery case, the post-office of the mem- 
ber, whether of the Senate or the House, had been looked out, his distance aa 
charged set down, then the post-office book referred to, and the actual, honest 
distance by the shortest route set down opposite, and then the computation 
made how much the charge was an excess, not of legal mileage, but of what 
would be legal, if the mileage was computed by the nearest mail route. 

" Mr. King, of Georgia, desired, at this point of the gentleman's remarks, 
to say a word ; the gentleman said that the members charged ; now, he (Mr. 
K.) desired to say, with reference to himself, that from the first, he had always 
refused to give any information to the Committee on Mileage with respect tc 
the mileage to which he would be entitled. He had told them it was theii 
special duty to settle the matter ; that he would have nothing to do with it. 
He, therefore, had charged nothing. 

" Mr. Greeley (continuing) said he thought all this showed the necessity of 
a new rule on the subject, for here they saw members shirking off, shrinking 
from the responsibility, and throwing it from one place to another. Nobody 
made up the account, but somehow an excess of 860,000 or $70,000 was 
charged in the accounts for mileage, and was paid from the Treasury. 

" Mr. King interrupted, and asked if he meant to charge him (Mr. K ) with 
shirking 7 Was that the gentleman's remark 7 



MR. GREELEY DEFENDS HIMSELF. 



263 



■ Mr. Greeley replied, that he only said that by some means or other, this 
excess of mileage was charged, and was paid by the Treasury. This raonej 
ought to be saved. Tho same rule ought to be applied to members of Con 
gress that was applied to other persons. 

" Mr. King desired to ask the gentleman from New York if he had correctly 
understood his language, for he had heard him indistinctly 1 He (Mr. K) 
had made the positive statement that he had never had anything to do with 
reference to the charge of his mileage, and he had understood the gentleman 
from New York to speak of shirking from responsibility. He desired to know 
if the gentleman applied that term to him ? 

" Mr. Greeley said he had applied it to no member. 

" Mr. King asked, why make use of this term, then 7 

" Mr. Greeley's reply to this interrogatory was lost in Ae confusion which 
prevailed in consequence of members leaving their seats and coming forward 
to the area in the center. 

" The Speaker called the House to order, and requested gentlemen to take 
their seats. 

*' Mr. Greeley proceeded. There was no intimation in the article that any 
member had made out his own account, but somehow or other the accounts had 
been so made up as to make a total excess of some $60,000 or $70,000, charge- 
able upon the Treasury. The general facts had been stated, to show that the 
law ought to be different, and there were several cases cited to show how the 
law worked badly ; for instance, from one district in Ohio, the member for- 
merly charged for four hundred miles, when he came on his own horse all the 
way ; but now the member from the same district received mileage for some 
eight or nine hundred miles. Now, ought that to be so 7 The whole argu- 
ment turned on this ; now, the distances were traveled much easier than for- 
merly, and yet more, in many cases much more, mileage was charged. The 
gentleman from Ohio who commenced this discussion, had made the point that 
there was some defect, some miscalculation in the estimate of distances. He 
could not help it ; they had taksn the post-office books, and relied on them, 
and if any member of the press had picked out a few members of this House, 
and held up their charges for mileage, it would have been considered invidious. 

" Mr. Turner called the attention of the member from New York u> the fact 
that the Postmaster General himself had thrown aside that Post Office book, 
in consequence of its incorrectness. He asked the gentleman if he did not 
know that fact 1 

" Mr. Greeley replied that the article itself stated that the Department did 
not charge mileage upon that book. Every possible excuse and mitigation 
had been given in the article ; but he appealed to the House — they were *bo 
masters of the law — why would they not change it, and njake it more just and 
equal 7 

" Mr. Sawyer wished to be allowed to ask the gentleman from New York a 



264 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

question. His complaint was that the article had done him injustice, by set- 
ting him down as some 300 miles nearer the seat of Government than his col- 
league [Mr. Schenck], although his colleague had stated before the House that 
be [Mr. Sawyer] resided some 60 or 70 miles further. 

" Now, he wanted to know why the gentleman had made this calculation 
against him, and in favor of his colleague 1 

" Mr. Greeley replied that he begged to assure the gentleman from Ohio 
that he did not think he had ever been in his thoughts from the day he 
had come here until the present day ; but he had taken the figures from the 
Post Office book, as transcribed by a former Clerk in the Post Office Depart- 
ment." 

After much more sparring of the same description, the resolu- 
tions were adopted, the Committee was appointed, the House ad- 
journed, and Mr. Greeley went home and wrote a somewhat face- 
tious account of the day's proceedings. The most remarkable sen- 
tence in that letter was this : 

" It was but yesterday that a Senator said to me that though he was utterly 
opposed to any reduction of Mileage, yet if the House did not stop passing 
Retrenchment bills for Buncombe, and then running to the Senate and beg- 
ging Senators to stop them there, he, for one, would vote to put through the 
next Mileage Reduction bill that came to the Senate, just to punish Members 
for their hypocrisy." 

Jan. 2nd. Mr. Greeley offered a resolution calling on the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury to communicate to the House the advantages 
resulting from the imposition by the Tariff of 1846 of duties of 5 
and 10 per cent, on certain manufactures of wool and hemp, more 
than was imposed on the raw material, and if they were not advan- 
tageous, then to state what action was required. 

Jan. Brd. The resolution came up. 

" Mr. "Wentworth objected to the Secretary of the Treasury being called 
upon for such information. If the gentleman from New York would apply to 
aim [Mr. W.], he would give him his reasons, but he objected to this reference 
JO the Secretary of the Treasury. He moved to lay it on the table, but with- 
irew it at the request of — 

" Mr. Greeley, wh » said it was well known that the TarijBF of 1846 was 
y repared by the Secretary ; he had been its eulogist and defender, and he 
how wished for his views on the particular points specified. He had un- 
•^nloially more than thirty times called on the defenders of the TariflF of 1846 



CONGRESS IN A PET. 



265 



to explain these things, but had never been able to get one, and now he wanted 
to go to headquarters. 

" Mr. Wentworth was not satified with this at all, and asked why the gentle- 
man from New York did not call on him. He was ready to give him any in- 
formation he had. 

" Mr. Greeley — That call is not in order. [A laugh.] 

*' Mr. W. — But he objected to the passage of a resolution imputing that the 
Secretary of the Treasury had dictated a Tariff" bill to the House. 

"Mr. Washington Hunt — Does not the gentleman from Illinois know that 
the Committee of Ways and Means called upon the Secretary for a Tariff, and 
that he prepared and transmitted this Tariff" to them 7 

" Mr. Wentworth — I do not know anything about it. 

" Mr. Hunt — Well, the gentleman's ignorance is remarkable, for it was very 
generally known. 

" Mr. Wentworth renewed his motion to lay the resolution on the table, 
on which the Ayes and Noes were demanded, and resulted Ayes 86, Noes 87." 

Jan. 4:th. Congress, to-day, showed its spite at the mileage ex- 
pose in a truly extraordinary manner. At the last session of this 
very Congress the mileage of the Messengers appointed by the Elec- 
toral Colleges to bear their respective votes for President and Vice 
President to Washington, had been reduced to twelve and a half 
cents per mile each way. Bat now it was perceived by members 
that either the mileage of the Messengers must be restored or their 
own reduced. " Accordingly," wrote Mr. Greeley in one of his let- 
ters, " a joint resolution was promptly submitted to the Senate, 
doubling the mileage of Messengers, and it went through that ex- 
alted body very quickly and easily. I had not noticed that it had 
been definitively acted on at all until it made its appearance in the 
House to-day, and was driven through with indecent rapidity well 
befitting its character. No Committee was allowed to examine it, 
no opportunity was afforded to discuss it, but by whip and spur, 
Previous Question and brute force of numbers, it was rushed through 
the necessary stages, and sent to the President for his sanction." 

The injustice of this impudent measure is apparent from the fact, 
that on the reduced scale of compensation, messengers received from 
ten to twenty dollars a day during the period of their necessary ab- 
sence from home. "The messenger from Maine, for instance, brings 
the vote of his State five hundred and ninety-five miles, and need 
not b© more than eight days absent from his business, at an expense 



266 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

certainly not exceeding $60 in all. The reduced compensation was 
$148 75, paying his expenses and giving him $11 per day over." 

Jan. 7th. The Printers' Festival was held this evening at AYash- 
ington, and Mr. Greeley attended it, and made a speech. His re- 
marks were designed to show, that " the interests of tradesmen 
generally, but especially of the printing and publishing trade, includ- 
ing authors and editors, were intimately involved in the establish- 
ment and maintenance of high rates of compensation for labor in 
all departments of industry. It is of vital interest to us all that the 
entire community shall be buyers of books and subscribers to jour- 
nals, which they cannot be unless their earnings are suflScient to 
supply generously their physical wants and leave some surplus for 
intellectual aliment. We ought, therefore, as a class, from regard 
to our own interests, if from no higher motive, to combine to keep 
up higher rates of compensation in our own business, and to favor 
every movement in behalf of such rates in other callings." 

He concluded by offering a sentiment : 

" The Lightning of Intelligence — Now crashing ancient tyrannies and top 
pling down thrones — May it swiftly irradiate the world." 

Ja/i.-9th. The second debate on the subject of Mileage occurred 
to-day. It arose thus : 

, The following item being under consideration, viz. : " For Com- 
pensation and Mileage of Senators, Members of the House of Rep- 
resentatives, and Delegates, $768,200," Mr. Embree moved to amend 
it by adding thereto the following : " Provided^ That the Mileage 
of Members of both Houses of Congress shall hereafter be estimated 
and charged upon the shortest mail-route from their places of resi- 
dence, respectively, to the city of Washington." 

The debate which ensued was long and animated, but wholly 
different in tone and manner from that of the previous week. 
Strange to relate, the Expose found, on this occasion, stanch de- 
fenders, and the House was in excellent humor. The reader, if he 
feels curious to know the secret of this happy change, may find it, 
I think, in that part of a speech delivered in the course of the de- 
bate, where the orator said, that " he had not seen a single news- 
paper of the country which did not approve of the course which 



TRAVELLING DEAD-HEAD 



267 



the gentleman from ITew York had taken ; and he believed there 
was no instance where the Editor of a paper had spoken out the 
genuine sentiments of the people, and made any expression of dis- 
approbation in regard to the effort of the gentleman from New York 
to limit this unjustifiable taxation of Milage." 

The debate relapsed, at length, into a merry conversation on the 
subject of traveling ' dead-heads.'' 

" Mr. Murphy said, when he came on, he left New York at 5 o'clock in the 
afternoon, and arrived at Philadelphia to supper ; and then entering the car 
again, he slept very comfortably, and was here in the morning at 8 o'clock. 
He lost no time. The mileage was ninety dollars. 

" Mr. Root would inquire of the gentleman from New York, whether he 
took his passage and came on as what the agents sometimes call a ' dead- 
head *?' [Laughter. 1 

" Mr. Murphy replied (amid considerable merriment and laughter) that he 
did not know of more than one member belonging to the New York delegation 
to whom that application could properly attach. 

" Mr. Root said, although his friend from New York was tolerably expert 
in everything he treated of, yet he might not understand the meaning of the 
term he had used. He would inform him that the term ' dead-head,' was ap- 
plied by the steamboat gentlemen to passengers who were allowed to travel 
without paying their fare. [A great deal of merriment prevailed throughout 
the hall, upon this allusion, as it manifestly referred to the two editors, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Levin, and the gentleman from New York, 
Mr. Greeley.] But Mr. R. (continuing to speak) said he was opposed to all 
personalities. He never indulged in any such thing himself, and he never 
would favor such indulgence on the part of other gentlemen. 
" Mr. Levin. I want merely to say — 
" Mr. Root. I am afraid — 

[" The confusion of vo-ices and merriment which followed, completely 
drowned the few words of pleasant explanation delivered here by Mr. Levin.] 
" Mr. Greeley addressed the chair. 

•' The Chairman. The gentleman from New York will suspend his remarks 
till the Committee shall come to order. 
" Order being restored — 

" Mr. Greeley said he did not pretend to know what the editor of the Phil- 
adelphia Sun, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Levin], had done. But 
if any gentleman, anxious about the matter, would inquire at the railroad 
offices in Philadelphia and Baltimore, he would there be informed that he (Mr 
Or.) never had passed over any portion of either of those roads free of charge 
— never in the world. One of the gentlemen interested had once told him he 
might, but he never had. 



268 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

*' Mr. Embree next obtained the floor, but gave way for 

" Mr. Haralson, who moved that the Committee rise. 

" Mr. Greeley appealed to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Haralson] to 
withhold his motion, while he might, by the courtesy of the gentleman from 
Indiana [Mr. EmbreeJ, make a brief reply to the allusion? which had been 
made to him and his course upon this subject. He asked only for five minutes 
But 

" Mr. Haralson adhered to his motion, which was agreed to. 

*' So the Committee rose and reported, ' No conclusion.* " 

Jan. 10th. The slave-trade in the District of Columbia was the 
subject of discussion, and the part which Mr. Greeley took in it, be 
thus described : 

" SLAVE-TRADE IN THE DISTRICT. 

ME. Greeley's remarks 

In Defense of Mr. Gotfs Eesolution^ (suppressed.) 

["Throughout the whole discussion of Wednesday, Mr. Greeley struggled 
at every opportunity for the floor, and at first was awarded it, but the speaker, 
on reflection, decided that it belonged to Mr. Wentworth of 111., who had made 
a previous motion. Had Mr. G. obtained the floor at any time, it was his in- 
tention to have spoken substantially as follows — the first paragraph being sug- 
gested by Mr. Sawyer's speech, and of course only meditated after that speech 
was delivered."] 

Then follows the speech, which was short, eloquent, and con- 
vincing. 

Jan. 11th. The third debate on the mileage question. Mr. Gree- 
ley, who " had been for three days struggling for the floor," ob- 
tained it, and spoke in defense of his course. For two highly auto- 
biographical paragraphs of his speech, room must be found in these 



" The gentleman saw fit to speak of my vocation as an editor, and to charg« 
me with editing my paper from my seat on this floor. Mr. Chairman, I do 
not believe there is one member in this Hall who has written less in his seat 
this session than I have done. I have oeen too much absorbed in the (to me) 
dovel and exciting scenes around me to write, and have written no editorial 
here. Time enough for that. Sir, before and after your daily sessions. But 
the gentleman either directly charged or plainly insinuated that I have neg- 



PERGONAL EXPLANATIONS. 



269 



Jected my duties as a member of this House to attend to my own private 'bus- 
iness. I meet this charge with a positive and circumstantial denial. Except 
a brief sitting one Private Bill day, I have not been absent one hour in all, 
nor the half of it, from the deliberations of this House. I have never voted 
for an early adjournment, nor to adjourn over. My name will be found re- 
corded on every call of the yeas and nays. And, as the gentleman insinuated 
a neglect of my duties as a member of a Committee (Public Lands,) I ap- 
peal to its Chairman for proof to any that need it, that I have never been ab- 
sent from a meeting of that Committee, nor any part of one ; and that I have 
rather sought than shunned labor upon it. And I am confident that, alike in 
my seat, and out of it, I shall do as large a share of the work devolving upon 
this House as the gentleman from Mississippi will deem desirable. 

"And now, Mr. Chairman, a word on the main question before us. I know 
very well — I knew from the first — what a low, contemptible, demagoguing 
business this of attempting to save public money always is. It is not a task 
for gentlemen — it is esteemed rather disreputable even for editors. Your 
gentlemenly work is spending — lavishing — distributing — taking. Savings are 
always such vulgar, beggarly, two-penny affairs — there is a sorry and stingy 
look about them most repugnant to all gentlemanly instincts. And beside, 
they never happen to hit the right place — it is always ' Strike higher !' ' Strike 
lower \' To be generous with other people's money — generous to self and 
friends especially, that is the way to be popular and commended. Go ahead, 
and never care for expense ! — if your debts become inconvenient, you can re- 
pudiate, and blackguard your creditors as descended from Judas Iscariot ' — 
Ah ! Mr. Chairman, J was not rocked in the cradle of gentility !" 

Jan. 14th. He wrote out another speech on a noted slave case, 
which at that time was attracting much attention. This effort was 
entitled, " My Speech on Pacheco and his Negro." It was humor- 
ous, but it was a ' settler' ; and it is a pity there is not room for it 
here. 

Jan. 16th. The Mileage Committee made their report, exonerat- 
ing members, condemning the Expose, and asking to be excused 
from further consideration of the subject. 

Jan. ITth. A running debate on Mileage — many suggestions 
made for the alteration of the law — nothing done — the proposed 
reform substantially defeated. The following conversation occurred 
upon the subject of Mr. Greeley's own mileage. Mr. Greeley tells 
the story himself, heading his letter ' A Dry Haul. 

" The House having resolved itself again into a Committtee o*" the ^hole, 



270 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

and taken up the Civil and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill, on which Mr. Murphj 
of New York had the floor, I stepped out to attend to some business, and was 
rather surprised to learn, on my way back to the Hall, that Mr. M. was mak- 
ing me the subject of his remarks. As I went in, Mr. M. continued — 

" Murphy. — As the gentleman is now in his seat, I will repeat what I have 
stated. I said that the gentleman who started this breeze about Mileage, by 
his publication in the Tribune, has himself charged and received Mileage by 
the usual instead of the shortest Mail Route. He charges me with taking 
$3 20 too much, yet I live a mile further than he, and charge but the same. 

" Gheeley. — The gentleman is entirely mistaken. Finding my Mileage wag 
computed at S184 for two hundred and thirty miles, and seeing that the short- 
est Mail Route, by the Post-Office Book of 1842, made the distance but two 
hundred and twenty-five miles, I, about three weeks ago, directed the Ser- . 
geant-at-Arms to correct his schedule and make my Mileage $180 for two 
hundred and twenty- five miles. I have not inquired since, but presume he has 
done so. So that I do not charge so much as the gentleman from Brooklyn, 
though, instead of living nearer, I live some two or three miles further from 
this city than he does, or fully two hundred and twenty-nine miles by the 
shortest Post Route. 

"Richardson of Illinois. — Did not the gentleman make out his own ac- 
count at two hundred and thirty miles ? 

'' Greeley. — Yes, sir, I did at first ; but, on learning that there was a 
shorter Post Route than that by which the Mileage from our city had been 
charged, I stepped at once to the Sergeant's room, informed him of the fact, 
and desired the proper correction. Living four miles beyond the New York 
Post Office, I might fairly have let the account stand as it was, but I did 
not.' 

Jan. 18th. Mr. Greeley's own suggestion with regard to Mile- 
age appears in the Tribune : 

1 "1. Reducie the Mileage to a generous but not extravagant allowance for 
the time and expense of traveling ; 

" 2. Reduce the ordinary or minimum pay to $5 per day, or (we prefer) $8 
for each day of actual service, deducting Sundays, days of adjournment 
within two hours from the time of assembling, and all absences not caused by 
Bickness ; 

" 3. Whenever a Member shall have served six sessions in either House, or 
both together, let his pay thenceforward be increased fifty per cent., and aftei 
he shall have served twelve years as aforesaid, let it be double that of an or- 
dinary or new Member ; 

•* 4. Pay the Chairman of each Committee, and all the Members of the 
three most important and laborious Committees of each House, fifty per cent 



THE AMENDMENT GAME. 271 

above the ordinary rates, and the Chairmen of the three (or more) most re- 
eponsible and laborious Committees of eaeh House (say Ways and Means, Ju- 
diciary and Claims) double the ordinary rates ; the Speaker double or treble, 
as should be deemed just ; 

*' 5. Limit the Long Sessions to four months, or half-pay thereafter." 

Jan. 20th. Another letter appears to-day, exposing some of the 
expedients by which the time of Congress is wasted, and the pub- 
lic business delayed. The bill for the appointment of Private 
Claims' Commissioners was before the House. If it had passed, 
Congress would have been relieved of one-third of its business, and 
the claims of individuals against the government would have had 
a chance of fair adjustment. But no. " Amendment was piled on 
amendment, half of them merely as excuses for speaking, and so 
were withdrawn as soon as the Cbairman's hammer fell to cutoff the 
five-minute speech in full flow. The first section was finally worried 
through, and the second (there are sixteen) was mouthed over for 
half an hour or so. At two o'clock an amendment was ready to 
be voted on, tellers were ordered, and behold! no quorum. The 
roll was called over ; members came running in from the lobbies 
and lounging-places ; a large quorum was found present ; the Chair- 
man reported the fact to the Speaker, and the House relapsed into 
Committee again. The dull, droning business of proposing amend- 
ments which were scarcely heeded, making five-minute speeches 
that were not listened to, and taking votes where not half voted, 
and half of those who did were ignorant of what they were voting 
upon, proceeded some fifteen minutes longer, when the patriotic for- 
titude of the House gave way, and a motion that the Committee 
rise prevailed." The bill has not yet been passed. Just claims 
clamor in vain for liquidation, and doubtful ones are bulbed oi 
maneuvered through. 

Jan. 22d. To-day the House of Representatives covered itself 
with glory. Mr. Greeley proposed an additional section to the 
General Appropriation Bill, to the effect, that members should not 
be paid for attendance when they did not attend, unless their ab- 
Bence was caused by sickness or public business. " At this very 
session," said Mr. Greeley in his speech on this occasion, "members 
have been absent for weeks together, attending to their privfttfl 



272 



THREE MONTHe IN CONGRESS. 



business, while this Committee is almost daily broken up for want 
t)f a quorum in attendance. This is a gross wrong to their con- 
stituents, to the country, and to those members who remain in their 
seats, and endeavor to urge forward the public business." 

What followed is thus related by Mr. Greeley in his letter to the 
Tribune : 

" Whereupon, Hon. Henry C. Murphy, of Brooklyn, (it takes him !) rose and 
moved the following addition to the proposed new section : 

" ' And there shall also be deducted for such time from the compensation of 
members, who shall attend the sittings of the House, as they shall be employ- 
ed in writing for newspapers.' " 

" Nr objection being made, the House, with that exquisite sense of dignity 
and propriety which has characterized its conduct throughout, adopted this 
amendment. 

" And ihen the whole section was voted down. 

" Mr. Greeley next, with a view of arresting the prodigal habit which baa 
grown up here of voting a bonus of $250 to each of the sub-clerks, messen- 
gers, pages, &G., &a., (their name is Legion) of both Houses, moved the fol- 
lowing new section : 

" ' Sec. 5. And be it further enacted, That it shall not henceforth be lawful 
for either Houses of Congress to appropriate and pay from its Contingent 
Fund any gratuity or extra compensation to any person whatever; but every 
appropriation of public money for gratuities shall be lawful only when ex- 
pressly approved and passed by both Houses of Congress.' 

" This was voted down of course ; and on the last night or last but one of 
the session, a motion will doubtless be sprung in each house for the 'usual' 
gratuity to these already enormously overpaid attendants, and it will probably 
pass, though I am informed that it is already contrary to law. But what of 
that?" 

Jan. 2Bd. An Honest Man in the House of Representatives of the 
United States seemed to be a foreign element, a fly in its cup, an 
ingredient that would not mix, a novelty that disturbed its peace. It 
struggled hard to find a pretext for the expulsion of the offensive 
person ; but not finding one, the next best thing was to endeavoi 
to show the country that Horace Greeley was, after all, no better 
than members of Congress generally. To-day occurred the cele- 
brated, yet pitiful. Battle of the Books. Congress, as every one 
knows, is accustomed annually to vote each member a small library 
of books, consisting of public documents, reports, statistics. Mr. 



BATTLE OF THE B00K8. 



273 



U-reeley appro red the' appropriation for reasons which will appear 
in a moment, and he knew the measure was sure to pass ; yet, un- 
willing to give certain blackguards of the House a handle against 
him and against the reforms with which he was identified, he voted 
formally against the appropriation. It is but fair to all cont^erned in 
the Battle, that an account of it, published in the Congressional 
Globe, should be given here entire, or nearly so. Accordingly, 
here it is : 

"In the House of Representatives on Tuesday, while the General Appro- 
priation Bill was up, Mr. Edwards, of Ohio, oflFered the following amendment: 

" Be it further enacted, That the sums of money appropriated in this bill 
for books be deducted from the pay of those members who voted for the appro- 
priation. 

" Mr. Edwards, in explanation, said that he had voted in favor of the appro- 
priation, and was of course willing that the amendment should operate upon 
himself precisely as it would upon any other member. He had no apology to 
make for the vote he had given. He would send to the Clerk's table the New 
York 'Tribune' of January 18th, and would request the Clerk to read the 
paragraph which he (Mr. E.) had marked. 

" The clerk read the following : 

" * And yet, Mr. Speaker, it has been hinted if not asserted on this floor that 
I voted for these Congressional books ! I certainly voted against them at 
every opportunity, when I understood the question. I voted against agreeing 
to that item of the report of the Committee of the Whole in favor of the De- 
ficiency bill, and, the item prevailing, I voted against the whole bill. I tried 
to be against them at every opportunity. But it seems that on some stand-up 
vote in Committee of the Whole, when I utterly misunderstood what was the 
question before the Committee, I voted for this item. Gentlemen say I did, 
and I must presume they are right. I certainly never meant to do so, and I 
did all in my power in the House to defeat this appropriation. But it is com- 
mon with me in incidental and hasty divisions, when I do not clearly under- 
stand the point to be decided, to vote with the Chairman of the Committee of 
Ways and Means, [Mr. Vinton,] who is so generally right and who has spec- 
ial charge of appropriation bills, and of expediting business generally. Thug 
only can I have voted for these books, as on all other occasions I certainly 
voted against them.' 

" The paragraph having been read : 

•' Mr. Edwards (addressing Mr. Greeley) said, I wish to inquire of the gen 
tleman from New York, if I am in order, whether that is his editorial ? 

" Mr. Greeley rose. 

fHubbut for some minutes. After which ] 

18 



274 THREE MONTH& IN CONGRESS. 

" Mr. Greeley said, every gentleman here must remember that that war 
but the substance of what he had spoken on this floor. His colleague next 
him [Mr. Rumsey] had told him, that upon one occasion he (Mr. 6.) had voted 
for the appropriation for books when he did not understand the vote. He (Mr. 
G.) had voted for tellers when a motion was made to pass the item ; but by 
mistake the Chairman passed over the motion for tellers, and counted him in 
favor of the item. 

" Mr. Edwards. I understand, then, that the gentleman voted without un- 
derstanding what he was voting upon, and that he would have voted against 
taking the books had he not been mistaken. 

" Mr Greeley assented. 

" Mr. Edwards. I assert that that declaration is unfounded in fact. I have 
the proof that the gentleman justified his vote both before and after the voting. 

" Mr. Greeley called for the proof. 

" Mr. Edwards said he held himself responsible, not elsewhere, but here, to 
prove that the gentleman from New York [Mr. Greeley] had justified his vote 
in favor of the books both before and after he gave that vote, upon the ground 
on which they all justified it, and that this editorial was an afterthought, writ- 
ten because he [Mr. G.] had been twitted by certain newspapers with having 
voted for the books. He held himself ready to name the persons by whom ho 
could prove it. 

" [Loud cries of ' Name them ; name them.'J 

" Mr. Edwards (responding to the repeated invitations which were addressed 
to him) said, Charles Hudson, Dr. Darling, and Mr. Putnam. 

" [The excitement was very great, and there was much confusion in all 
parts of the Hall — many members standing in the aisles, or crowding forward 
to the area and the vicinity of Mr. Greeley.] 

" Mr. Greeley (addressing Mr. Edwards). I say, neither of these gentlemen 
will say so. 

" Mr. Edwards. I hold myself responsible for the proof. (Addressing Mr. 
Hudson). Mr. Hudson will come to the stand. [General laughter.] 
******** 

" Mr. Greeley. Now, if there is any gentleman who will say that he has un- 
derstood me to say that I voted for it understandingly, I call upon him to come 
forward. 

" Mr. Edwards. The gentleman calls for the testimony. Mr. Hudson is 
the man — Dr. Darling is the man. 

"[Members had again flocked into the area. There were cries of 'Hudson, 
Hudson,' ' down in front,' and great disorder throughout the House.] 

" The Chairman again earnestly called to order ; and all proceedings were 
arrested for the moment, in order to obtain order. 

" The House having become partially stilled — 

" Mr. Hudson rose and said : I suppose it is not in order for me to address 



BATTLE OF THE BOOKS. ' 275 

the Committee ; but, as I have been called upon, if there is no objection, I 
have no objection on my part, to state what I have heard the gentleman from 
New York [Mr. GreeleyJ say. 

" [Cries from all quarters, 'Hear him, hear him.'] 

"The Chairman. If there is no objection the gentleman can proceed. 

" No objection being made — 

" Mr. Hudson said, I can say, then, that on a particular day, when this 
ba)k resolution had been before the House — as it was before the House several 
times, I cannot designate the day — but one day, when we had been passing 
upon the question of books, in walking from the Capitol, 1 fell in with my 
friend from New York, [Mr. Greeley ;] that we conversed from the Capitol 
down on to the avenue in relation to these books ; that he stated — as I under- 
stood him (and I think I could not have been mistaken) — that he was in favor 
of the purchase of the books ; that he either had or should vote for the books, 
and he stated two reasons : the one was, that some of these publications were 
of such a character that they would never be published unless there was some 
public patronage held out to the publishers ; and the other reason was, tha^ 
the other class of these books at least contained important elements of his- 
tory, which would be lost unless gathered up and published soon, and as the 
distribution of these books was to diffuse the information over the community, 
he was in favor of the purchase of these books ; and that he himself had suf 
fered from not having access to works of this character. That was the sub- 
stance of the conversation. 

" Mr. Hudson having concluded — 

" [There were cries of ' Darling, Darling.'] 

" Mr. Darling rose and (no objection being made) proceeded to say : On one 
of the days on which we voted for the books now in question — the day that 
the appropriation passed the House — I was on my way from the Capitol, and, 
passing down the steps, I accidentally came alongside the gentleman from 
New York, [Mr. Greeley,] who was in conversation with another gentleman — 
a member of the House — whose name I do not recollect. I heard him (Mr 
G.) say he justified the appropriation for the books to the members, on the 
ground of their diffusing general information. He said that in the City of 
New York he knew of no place where he could go to obtain the information 
contained in these books ; that although it was supposed that in that place the 
sources of information were much greater than in almost any other portion of 
the country, he would hardly know where to go in that City to find this infor- 
mation ; and upon this ground that he would support the resolution in favor 
of the books This conversation, the gentleman will recollect, took place going 
down from the west door of the Capitol and before we got to the avenue. 1 
do not now recollect the gentleman who was with the gentleman from New 
York. 

" Mr. Putnam rose amid loud cries of invitation, and (no objection being 



276 THREE MONTfiS IN CONGRESS. 

made,) said : As jqj name has been referred to in relatior. to thir {uestion, 
it is due perhaps to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Greeley] tha - I should 
state this : That some few days since the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Edwards 
called upon me here, and inquired of me whether I had heard my colleague 
[Mr. Greeley] say anything in relation to his vote as to the books. I that 
morning had received the paper, and I referred him to the editorial contained 
therein which has been read by the Clerk ; but I have no recollection of stat- 
ing to the gentleman from Ohio that I heard ray colleague say he justified the 
vote which he gave ; nor have I any recollection whatever that I ever heard 
my colleague say anything upon the subject after the vote given by him. 

" The gentleman from Ohio must have misunderstood me, and it is due to 
my colleague that this explanation should be made. 

" [Several voices : ' What did he say before the vote 7'] 

•'I have no recollection [said Mr. P.] that I ever heard him say anything. 

" Mr. Edwards rose, and wished to know if any of his five minutes waa 
left 7 

*' No reply was heard ; but, after some conversation, (being allowed to pro- 
ceed,) he said, I have stated that I have no apologies to make for giving this 
vote. I voted for these books for the very reasons which the gentleman from 
New York [Mr. Greeley] gave to these witnesses. I stated that I could prove 
by witnesses that the gentleman has given reasons of this kind, and that that 
editorial was an afterthought. If the House requires any more testimony. 
it can be had ; but out of the mouths of two witnesses he is condemned. That 
is scriptural as well as legal. 

" I have not risen to retaliate for anything this editor has said in reference 
to the subject of mileage. I have been classed among those who have re- 
ceived excessive mileage. I traveled in coming to Washington forty-three 
miles further than the Committee paid me ; but I stated before the Committee 
the reasons why I made the change of route. I had been capsized once 

" The Chairman interposed, and said he felt bound to arrest this debate. 

" [Cries of ' Greeley ! Greeley !'J 

"Mr. Greeley rose 

" The Chairman stated that it would not be in order for the gentleman to 
address the House while there was no question pending. 

" [Cries of ' Suspend the rules ; hear him.'l 

" Mr. Tallmadge rose and inquired if his colleague could not proceed by gen- 
3ral consent 7 

" The Chairman replied in the affirmative 

" No objection was made, and 

^ Mr. Greeley proceeded. The gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Hud- 
BonJ simply misunderstood only one thing. He states me to have urged the 
considerations which he urged to me. He urged these considerations — and I 
think forcibly. I say now, as I did the other day on the floor of this House, 



MR. GREELEY EXPLAINS. 277 

I approre of the appropriation for the books, provided they are honestly dis 
posed of according to the intent of the appropriation. 

" Mr. Edwards. Why, then, did you make the denial in the Tribune, and 
say that you voted against it? 

" Mr. Greeley. I did vote against it. I did not vote for it, because I did 
not choose to have some sort of gentlemen on this floor hawk at me. The 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Hudson] submitted considerations to me 
of which I admitted the force. I admit them now; I admit that the House 
was justifiable in voting for this appropriation, for the reason ably stated by 
the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means; and I think I was 
justifiable, as this Hall will show, in not voting for it. In no particular was 
there collision between what I said on this floor, the editorial, and what I said 
in conversation. The conversation to which the gentleman from Wisconsin 
[Mr. Darling] refers is doubtless the same of which the gentleman from Mas 
sachusetts [Mr. Hudson] has spoken. 

" Mr. G. having concluded — 

** On motion of Mr. Vinton, the Committee rose and reported the bill to tho 
House, with sundry amendments." 

After the flurry was over, Mr. Greeley went home and wrote an 
explanation which appeared a day or two after in the Tribune. It 
began thus : 

" The attack upon me by Dr. Edwards of Ohio to-day, was entire- 
ly unexpected. I had never heard nor suspected that he cherished 
ill-will toward me, or took exception to anything I had said or done. 
I have spoken with him almost daily as a friendly acquaintance, 
and only this morning had a familiar conference with him respect- 
ing his report on the importation of adulterated drugs, which has 
just been presented. I have endeavored through the Tribune to 
do justice to his spirited and most useful labors on that subject. 
Neither in word nor look did he ever intimate that he was offended 
with me — not even this morning. Conceive, then, my astonish- 
ment, when, in Committee of the Whole, after the general appro- 
priation bill had been gone through by items and sections, he rose, 
and moving a sham amendment in order to obtain the floor, sent 
to the clerk's desk to be read, a Tribune containing the substance of 
my remarks on a recent occasion, repelling the charge that I had 
voted for the Congressional books, and that having been read, he 
proceeded to pronounce it false, and declare that he had three wit 



278 



THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 



nesses in the House to prove it. I certainly could not have besa 
more surprised had he drawn a pistol and taken aim at me." 
******* 

Jan. 25th. Mr. Greeley (as a member of the Committee on pub- 
lic lands,) reported a bill providing for the reduction of the price 
of lands bordering on Lake Superior. In Committee of the Whole, 
he moved to strike from the army appropriation bill the item of 
$38,000 for the recruiting service, sustaining his amendment by 
an elaborate speech on the recruiting system. Eejected. Mr. Gree- 
ley moved, later in the day, that the mileage of officers be calcu- 
lated by the shortest route. Rejected. The most striking pass- 
age of the speech on the recruiting system was this : 

" Mr. Chairman, of all the iniquities and rascalities committed in our coun- 
try, I think those perpetrated in this business of recruiting are among the 
most flagrant. I doubt whether this government punishes as many frauds in 
all as it incites by maintaining this system of recruiting. I have seen some- 
thing of it, and been by hearsay made acquainted with much more. A sim- 
ple, poor man, somewhat addicted to drinking, awakes from a drunken revel 
in which he has disgraced himself by some outrage, or inflicted some injury, or 
has squandered means essential to the support of his family. He is ashamed 
to enter his home — ashamed to meet the friends who have known him a re- 
spectable and sober man. At this moment of half insanity and utter horror, 
the tempter besets him, portrays the joys of a soldier's life in the most glow- 
ing and seductive colors, and persuades him to enlist. Doubtless men have 
often been made drunk on purpose to delude them into an enlistment ; for there 
is (or lately was) a bounty paid to whoever will bring in an acceptable re- 
cruit to the station. All manner of false inducements are constantly held out 
— absurd hopes of promotion and glory are incited, and, when not in his right 
mind, the dupe is fastened for a term which will probably outlast his life. 
Very soon he repents and begs to be released — his distracted wife pleads — his 
famishing children implore — but all in vain. Shylock must have his bond, 
and the husband and father is torn away from them for years — probably for 
ever. This whole business of recruiting is a systematic robbery of husbands 
from their wives, fathers from their children, and sons from their widowed and 
dependent mothers. It is not possible that a Christian people have any need 
rf such a fabric of iniquity, and I call upon this House to unite in decreeing 
its abolition." 

Jan. Blst. In Committee of the Whole, the naval appropriation 
bill being under consideration, Mr, Greeley offered an amendment 



THE LAST NIGHT OF THE oESSION. 279 

reducing the list of warrant officers. Rejected. He also spoke for 
abolishing the grog system. 

Feb. \st. Mr. Greeley made a motion to the effect, that no oflS- 
cer of the navy should be promoted, as long as there were otners 
of the higher rank unemployed. Rejected. 

Feb \Uh. Mr. Greeley submitted the following resolution . 

" Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to inquire 
^vhether there be anything in our laws or authoritative Judicial decisions 
which countenances the British doctrine of ' Once a subject always a subject,' 
and to report what action of Congress, if any, be necessary to conform the 
laws and decisions aforesaid, consistently and thoroughly to the American doc- 
trine, affirming the right of every man to migrate from his native land to 
some other, and, in becoming a citizen of the latter, to renounce all allegi- 
ance and responsibility to the former." 

Objected to. The resolution, was therefore, according to the 
rule, withdrawn. 

Feb. 26th. A proposal having been made that the New Mexico 
and Texas Boundary Question be referred to the Supreme Court, 
Mr. Greeley objected, on the ground that the majority of the mem- 
bers of that Court were slaveholders. 

Feb. 27th. The Committee to whom had been referred Mr. Gree- 
ley's Land Reform Bill, asked leave to be relieved from the further 
consideration of the subject. Mr. Greeley demanded the yeas and 
nays. Refused. A motion was made to lay the bill on the table, 
which was carried, the yeas and nays being again refused. In the 
debates on the organization of the new territories, California, etc., 
Mr. Greeley took a spirited part. 

March 4th. The last night of the session had arrived. It was 
Saturday. The appropriation bills were not yet passed. The bill 
for the organization of the new territories, acquired by the Mexican 
war, had still to be acted upon. It was a night of struggle, tur- 
moil, and violence, though the interests of future empires were con- 
cerned in its deliberatioTis. A few sentences from Mr. Greeley's own 
larrative will give an idea of the scene : 



280 THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

"The House met after recess at six — the seats soon filled, the lobbice and 
galleries densely crowded. 

***** 

** Mjmbers struggled in wild tumult for the floor. 
***** 

" A vehement yell of ' Mr. Speaker !' rose from the scores who jumped on 
the instant for the floor. 

" Here the effect of the Previous Question was exhausted, and the wild rush 
of half the House for the floor — the universal yell of ' Mr. Speaker !' was re- 
newed. 

******** 

" The House, still intensely excited, proceeded very irregularly to other 
business — mainly because they must await the Senate's action on the Thom- 
son substitute. 

" At length — after weary watching till five o'clock in the morning, when 
even garrulity had exhausted itself with talking on all manner of frivolous 
pretexts, and relapsed into grateful silence — when profligacy had been satiated 
with rascally votes of the public money in gratuities to almost everybody con- 
nected with Congress, &c., &c.,— word came that the Senate had receded alto- 
gether from its Walker amendment and everything of the sort, agreeing to the 
bill as an Appropriation Bill simply, and killing the House amendment by 
surrendering its own. Close on its heels came the Senate's concurrence in the 
House bill extending the Revenue Laws to California; and a message was sent 
with both bills to rouse Mr. Polk (still President by sufferance) from his first* 
slumbers at the Irving House (whither he had retired from the Capitol some 
hours before), and procure his signature to the two bills. In due time — though 
it seemed very long now that it was broad daylight and the excitement was 
subsiding — word was returned that the President had signed the bills and had 
nothing further to offer, a message having been sent to the Senate, and the 
House was ready to adjourn ; Mr. Winthrop made an eloquent and affecting 
address on relinquishing the Chair ; and the House, a little before seven 
o'clock in the bright sunshine of this blessed Sunday morning — twice blessed 
after a cloudy week of fog and mist, snow and rain without, and of fierce con- 
tention and angry discord within the Capitol — adjourned sine die. 

" The Senate, I understand, has not yet adjourned, but the latter end of i* 
had gathered in a bundle about the Vice-President's chair, and was still pass- 
ing extra gratuities to everybody — and if the bottom is not out of the Treas- 
ury, may be doing so yet for aught I know. Having seen enough of this, I 
did not go over to their chamber, but came wearily away." 

March 5tli. One more glimpse ought to be given at the House 



THE " USUAL GRATUITY." 281 

during that last night of the session. Mr. Greeley explains the 
methods, the infamous tricks, by which the ' usual' extra allowance 
to the employes of the House is maneuvered through. 

" Let me," he wrote, " explain the origin of this ' usual' iniquity. I am 
informed that it commenced at the close of one of the earlier of the Long 
Sessions now unhappily almost biennial. It was then urged, with some plau- 
sibility, that a number (perhaps half) of the sub-officers and employes of the 
House were paid a fixed sum for the session — that, having now been obliged 
to labor an unusually long term, they were justly entitled to additional pay. 
The Treasury was full — the expectants were assiduous and seductive — the 
Members were generous — (it is so easy for most men to be flush with other 
people's money) — and the resolution passed. Next session the precedent was 
pleaded, although the reason for it utterly failed, and the resolution slipped 
through again — I never saw how till last night Thenceforward the thing 
went easier and easier, until the disease has beoome chronic, and only to be 
cured by the most determined surgery. 

" Late last night — or rather early this morning — while the House was 
awaiting the final action of the Senate on the Territorial collision — a fresh at- 
tempt was made to get in the ' usual extra allowance' again. Being objected 
to and not in order, a direct attempt was made to suspend the Rules, (I think 
I cannot be mistaken in my recollection,) and defeated — not two-thirds rising 
in its favor, although the free liquor and trimmings provided by the expect- 
ants of the bounty had for hours stood open to all comers in a convenient side- 
room, and a great many had already taken too much. In this dilemma the 
•motion was revami ed into one to suspend the Rules to admit a resolution to 
pay the Chaplain his usual compensation for the Session's service, and I was 
personally and urgently entreated not to resist this, and thus leave the Chap- 
lain utterly unpaid. I did resist it, however, not believing it true that no pro- 
vision had till this hour been made for paying the Chaplain, and suspecting 
Bome swindle lay behind it. The appeal was more successful with others, and 
the House suspended its Rules to admit this Chaplain-paying resolution, ou', 
of order. The moment this was done a motion was made to amend the reso- 
luiion by providing another allowance for somebody or other, and upon this 
was piled still another amendment — ' Monsieur Tonson come again -to pay 
' the usual extra compensation' to the sub-Clerks, Messengers, Pages, etc., etc 
As soon as this amendment was reached for consideration — in fact as soon as I 
could get the floor to do it — I raised the point of order that it could not be in 
order, when the rules had been suspended for a particular purpose, to let in, 
under cover of that suspension, an entirely different proposition, for which, by 
itself, it was notorious that a suspension could not be obtained. Thi^ waa 
promptly overruled, the Ayes and Noes on the amendment refused — ditto on 

e Resolution as amended — and the whole crowded through under the Previous 



282 THREE M.ONTHS IN CONGRESS. 

Question in less than no time. Monroe Edwards would have admired the dsx- 
terity and celerity of the performance. All that could be obtained was a vote 
by Teller.s, and ninety-four voted in favor to twenty-two against — a bare quo- 
rum in all, a great many being then in the Senate — none, I believe, at that 
moment in the ' extra' refectory. But had no such refectory been opened in 
either end of the Capitol, I believe the personal collisions which disgraced the 
Nation through its Representatives would not have occurred. I shall not 
speak further of them — I would not mention them at all if they were not un- 
happily notorious already." 

March 6th. Mr. Greeley was one of the three thousand persons 
who attended the Inauguration ball, which he describes as "a 
sweaty, seething, sweltering jam, a crowd of duped foregatherers 
from all creation." 

'* I went," he says, "to see the new President, who had not before come 
within my contracted range of vision, and to mark the reception accorded to 
him by the assembled thousands. I came to gaze on stately heads, not nimble 
feet, and for an hour have been content to gaze on the flitting phantasmagoria 
of senatorial brows and epauletted shoulders — of orators and brunettes, oflice- 
eeekers and beauties. I have had ' something too much of this,' and lo ! ' the 
hour of hours' has come — the buzz of expectation subsides into a murmur of 
satisfaction — the new President is descending the grand stairway which ter- 
minates in the ball-room, and the human mass forms in two deep columns to 
receive him. Between these. General T^iylor, supported on either hand, walks 
through the long saloon and back through other like columns, bowing and' 
greeting with kind familiarity those on this side and on that, paying especial 
attention to the ladies as is fit, and everywhere welcomed in turn with the most 
cordial good wishes. All wish him well in his new and arduous position, even 
those who struggled hardest to prevent his reaching it. 

" But, as at the Inauguration, there is the least possible enthusiasm. Now 
and then a cheer is attempted, but the result is so nearly a failure that the 
daring leader in the exploit is among the first to laugh at the miscarriage. 
There is not a bit of heart in it. 

" 'They don't seem to cheer with much unction,' I remarked to a Taylor 
original. 

" ' Ne-e-o, they don't cheer much,' he as faintly replied; 'there is a good 
deal of doubt as to the decorum of cheering at a social ball.' 

" True enough ; the possibility of indecorum was sufiicient to check the im- 
pulse to cheer, and very few passed the barrier. The cheers ' stuck in the 
throat,' like Macbeth's Amen, and the proprieties of the occasion were well 
lared for. 

" But just imxgine Old Hal walking down that staircase, the just inaugu- 



FiREWELL TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. 283 

rated President of the United States, into the midst of three thousand of the 
elite of the beauty and chivalry of the Whig party, and think how the rafters 
would have quivered with the universal acclamation. Just think of some one 
stopping to consider whether it might not be indecorous to cheer on such an 
occasion ! What a solitary hermit that considerer would be ! 

** Let those who will, flatter the chief dispenser of Executive patronage, dis- 
covering in every act and feature some resemblance to Washington — I am 
content to wait, and watch, and hope. I burn no incense on his altar, attach 
no flattering epithets to his name. I turn from this imposing pageant, so rich 
in glitter, so poor in feeling, to think of him who should have been the central 
figure of this grand panorama — the distant, the powerless, the unforgotten — 
' behind the mountains, but not setting' — the eloquent champion of Liberty in 
both hemispheres — whose voice thrilled the hearts of the uprising, the long- 
trampled sons of Leonidas and Xenophon — whose appeals for South American 
independence were read to the hastily mustered squadrons of Bolivar, and 
nerved them to sweep from this fair continent the myrmidons of Spanish op- 
pression. My heart is with him in his far southern abiding-place — with him, 
the early advocate of African Emancipation; the life-long champion of a diver- 
sified Home Industry ; of Internal Improvement ; and not less glorious in 
his later years as the stern reprover of the fatal spirit of conquest and aggress- 
ion. Let the exulting thousands quaff" their red wines at the revel to the vic- 
tor of Monterey and Buena Vista, while wit points the sentiment with an 
epigram, and beauty crowns it with her smiles : more grateful to me the still- 
ness of my lonely chamber, this cup of crystal water in which I honor the 
cherished memory with the old, familiar aspiration — 

' Here 's to you, Harry Clay !' " 

March 9th. Mr. Greeley has returned to New York. To-day he 
took leave of his constituents in a long letter published in the Tri- 
bune, in which he reviewed the proceedings of the late session, 
characterized it as a Failure, and declined to take to himself any 
part of the blauie thereof. These were his concluding words : 

" My work as your servant is done — whether well or ill it remains for you 
to judge. Very likely I gave the wrong vote on some of the diflBcult and 
3omplicated questions to which I was called to respond Ay or No with hardly 
a moment's warning. If so, you can detect and condemn the error; for my 
name stands recorded in the divisions by Yeas and Nays on every public 
and all but one private bill, (which was laid on the table the moment the 
Bitting opened, and on which my name had just been passed as I entered the 
Hall.) I wish it were the usage among us to publish less of speeches and 



284 



THREE MONTHS IN CONGRESS. 



more of propositions and votes thereupon — it would give the mass of the peo- 
ple a much clearer insight into the management of their public affairs. My 
successor being already chosen and commissioned, I shall hardly be suspected 
of seeking your further kindness, and I shall be heartily rejoiced if he 
shall be able to combine equal zeal in your service with greater efficiency — 
equal fearlessness with greater popularity. That I have been somewhat 
annoyed at times by some of the consequences of my Mileage Expose ia 
true, but I have never wished to recall it, nor have I felt that I owed an 
apology to any, and I am quite confident, that if you had sent to "Washington 
(as you doubtless might have done) a more sternly honest and fearless Rep- 
resentative, he would have made himself more unpopular with a large por- 
tion of the House than I did. I thank you heartily for the glimpse of public 
fife which your favor has afforded me, and hope to render it useful hence- 
forth not to myself only but to the public. In ceasing to be your agent, and 
returning with renewed zest to my private cares and duties, I have a single 
additional favor to ask, not of you especially, but of all ; and I am sure my 
friends at least will grant it without hesitation. It is that you and they will 
dblige me henceforth by remembering that my name is simply 

" Horace Gbeeley." 

And thus ended Horace Greeley's three months in Congress. No 
man ever served his country more faithfully. No man ever received 
less reward. One would have supposed, that such a manly and 
Drave endeavor to economize the public money and the public time, 
such singular devotion to the public interests in the face of opposi- 
tion, obloquy, insult, would have elicited from the whole country, 
or at least from many parts of it, cordial expressions of approval. 
It did not, however. With no applauding shouts was Horace 
Greeley welcomed on his return from the Seat of Corruption. No 
enthusiastic mass- meetings of his constituents passed a series of 
resolutions, approving his course. He has not been named for re- 
election. Do the people, then, generally feel that an Honest Man 
is out of place in the Congress of the United States ? 

Only from the little town of North Fairfield, Ohio, came a hearty 
cry of Well Done ! A meeting of the citizens of that place was 
held for the purpose of expressing their sense of his gallant and 
honorable conduct. He responded to their applauding resolutions 
in a characteristic letter. "Let me beg of you," said he, "to think 
little of Persons^ in this connection, and much of Measures. Should 
any see fit to tell you that I am dishonest, or ambitious, or hollow- 



/iiii'';i;;5i'|iiiiii"iiliii 







ASSOCIATION IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 285 

hearted in this matter, don't stop to contradict or confute him, but 
press on his attention the main question respecting the honesty of 
these crooked charges. It is with these the public is concerned, 
and not this or thpt man's motives. Calling me a hypocrite or 
demagogue cannot make a charge of $1,664 for coming to Congresa 
from Illinois and going back again an honest one." 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ASSOCIATION IN" THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

Accessions to the corps— The course of the Tribune— Horace Greeley in Ohio— The 
Rochester knockings— The mediums at Mr. Greeley's house — Jenny Lind goes to 
see them— Her behavior— Woman's Rights Convention— The Tribune Association 
— The hireling system. 

But the Tribune held on its strong, triumphant way. Circula- 
tion, ever on the increase ; advertisements, from twenty to twenty- 
six columns daily ; supplements, three, four, and five times a week ; 
price increased to a shilling a week without loss of subscribers ; 
Europeon reputation extending; correspondence more and more 
able and various; editorials more and more elaborate and telling; 
new ink infused into the Tribune's swelling veins. What with the 
supplements and the thickness of the paper, the volumes of 1849 
and 1850 are of dimensions most huge. We must look through 
them, notwithstanding, turning over the broad black leaves swiftly, 
pausing seldom, lingering never. 

The letter R. attached to the literary notices apprises us that 
early in 1849, Mr. George Ripley began to lend the Tribune the 
aid of his various learning and considerate pen. Bayard Taylor, re- 
turned from viewing Europe a-foot, is now one of the Tribune 
corps, and this year he goes to California, and ' opens up ' the land 
of gold to the view of all the world, by writing a series of letters, 
graphic and glowing. Mr. Dana comes home and resumes his place 
in the office as manager general and second-in-command. During 



286 ASSOCIA.TION IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

the disgraceful period of Re-action, William Henry Fry, now the 
Tribune's sledge-hammer, and the country's sham-demolisher, then 
an American in Paris, sent across the Atlantic to the Tribune many 
a letter of savage protest. Mr. G. G. Foster served up Kew York 
in savory 'slices' and dainty 'items.' Horace Greeley confined 
himself less to the oflSce than before ; but whether he went on a 
tour of observation, or of lecturing, or of political agitation, he 
Drought all he saw, heard and thought, to bear in enhancing the in- 
terest and value of his paper. 

In 1849, the Tribune, true to its instinct of giving hospitality to 
every new or revived idea, afforded Proudbon a full hearing in re- 
views, essays and biography. His maxim, Peopertt is Robbery, a 
maxim felt to be true, and acted upon by the early Christians who 
had all things in common, furnished a superior text to the conserva- 
tive papers and pulpits. As usual, the Tribune was accused of utter- 
ing those benign words, not of publishing them merely. On the oc- 
casion of the Astor-Place riot, the Tribune supported the authorities, 
and wrote much for law and order. In the Hungarian war, the ed- 
itors of the Tribune took an intense interest, and Mr. Greeley tried 
hard to condense some of the prevalent enthusiasm into substantial 
help for the cause. He thought that embroidered flags and parch- 
ment addresses were not exactly the commodities of which Kossuth 
stood most in need, and he proposed the raising of a patriotic loan 
for Hungary, in shares of a hundred dollars each. "Let each vil- 
lage, each rural town, each club, make up by collections or other- 
wise, enough to take one share of scrip, and so up to as many 
as possible ; let our men of wealth and income be personally solic- 
ited to invest generously, and let us resolve at least to raise one 
million dollars off-hand. Another million will come much easier 
alter the first." But alas ! soon came the news of the catastrophe. 
For a reformed code, the Tribune contended powerfully during the 
whole time of the agitation of that subject. It welcomed Father 
Matthew this year — fought Bishop Hughes — discussed slavery — be- 
wailed the fall of Rome — denounced Louis Napoleon-— had Consul 
Walsh, the American apologist of despotism, recalled from Paris — 
helped Mrs. Putnam finish Bowen of the North American Review 
— explained to workmen the advantages of association in labor- 
assisted Watson G. Haynes in his crusade against flogging in the 



THE ROCHESTER KNOCKINGS. 287 

navy — went dead against the divorce theories of Henry James and 
others — ^and did whatsoever else seemed good in its own eyes. 
Among other things, it did this : Horace Greeley being accused 
by the Evening Post of a corrupt compliancy with the slave inter- 
est, the Tribune began its reply with these words : 

"You lie, villain ! willfully, wickedly, basely lie !" 

This observation called forth much remark at the time. 

Thrice the editor of the Tribune visited the Great West this year, 
and he received many private assurances, though, I believe, no pub- 
lic ones, that his course in Congress was approved by the Great 
West. In Cincinnati he received marked attention, which he grace- 
fully acknowledged in a letter, published May 21st, 1849 : — '^ I can 
hardly close this letter without acknowledging the many acts of 
personal generosity, the uniform and positive kindness, with which 
I was treated by the citizens of the stately Queen of the West. I 
would not so far misconstrue and outrage these hospitalities as to 
drag the names of those who tendered them before the public gaze; 
but I may express in these general terms my regret that time was 
not afforded me to testify more expressly my appreciation of regards 
which could not fail to gratify, even while they embarrassed, one so 
unfitted for and unambitious of personal attentions. In these, the 
disappointment caused by the failure of our expected National Tem- 
perance Jubilee was quickly forgotten, and only the stern demands 
of an exacting vocation impelled me to leave so soon a city at once 
so munificent and so interesting, the majestic outpost of Free Labor 
and Free Institutions, in whose every street the sound of the build- 
er's hammer and trowel speaks so audibly of a growth and great- 
ness hardly yet begun. Kind friends of Cincinnati and of Southern 
Ohio ! I wave you a grateful farewell !" 

In December appeared the first account of the 'Rochester Knock- 
ings' in the Tribune, in the form of a letter from that most practical 
of cities. The letter was received and published quite in the ordi- 
nary course of business, and without the slightest suspicion on the 
part of the editors, that they were doing an act of historical import- 
ance. On the contrary, they were disposed to laugh at the myste- 
rious narrative ; and, a few days after its publication, in reply to an 
anxious correspondent, "he paper held the following language:— 
" For ourselves, we really cannot see that these singular revelations 



288 ASSOCIATION IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

and experiences have, so far, amounted to much. We have yet to 
hear of a clairvoyant whose statements concerning facts were relia- 
ble, or whose facts were any better than any other person's, or who 
could discourse rationally without mixing in a proportion of non- 
sense. And as for these spirits in Western New York or elsewhere, 
it strikes us they might be better engaged than in going about to 
give from one to three knocks on the floor in response to success- 
ive letters of the alphabet ; and we are confident that ghosts who 
had anything to communicate worth listening to, would hardly 
stoop to so uninteresting a business as liammering." 

Nor has the Tribune, since, contained one editorial word intimat- 
ing a belief in the spiritual origin of the ' manifestations.' The sub- 
ject, however, attracted much attention, and, when the Kochester 
' mediums' came to the city, Horace Greeley, in the hope of eluci- 
dating the mystery, invited them to reside at his house, which they 
did for several weeks. He did not discover, nor has any one dis- 
covered, the cause of the singular phenomena, but he very soon ar- 
rived at the conclusion, that, whatever their cause might be, they 
could be of no practical utility, could throw no light on the tortu- 
ous and difficult path of human life, nor cast any trustworthy 
gleams into the future. During the stay of the mediums at his 
house, they were visited by a host of distinguished persons, and, 
among others, by Jenny Lind, whose behavior on the occasion was 
not exactly what the devotees of that vocalist would expect. 

At the request of her manager, Mr. Greeley called upon the 
Nightingale at the Union Hotel, and, in the course of his visit, fell 
into conversation with gentlemen present on the topic of the day, 
the Spiritual Manifestations. The Swede approached, listened to 
the conversation with greedy ears, and expressed a desire to witness 
some of the marvels which she heard described. Mr. Greeley invited 
Tier to his house, and the following Sunday morning was appointed 
for the visit. She came, and a crowd came with her, filling up the 
narrow parlor of the house, and rendering anything in the way of 
calm investigation impossible. Mr. Greeley said as much ; but the 
' mediums' entered, and the rappings struck up with vigor, Jennj 
Bitting on one side of the table and Mr. Greeley on the other. 

" Take your hands from under the table," said she to the mastei 
of the house, with the air of a new duchess. 



woman's rights convention. 289 

It was as though she had said, ' I did n't come here to be hum- 
bngged, Mr. Pale Face, and you 'd better not try it' The insulted 
£;ent]eman raised his hands into the air, and did not request her to 
leave the house, nor manifest in any other way his evidently acute 
sense of her impertinent conduct. As long as we worship a woman 
on account of a slight peculiarity in the formation of part of her 
throat, the woman so worshiped will give herself airs. The blame 
is ours, not hers. The rapping continued, and the party retired, 
after some hours, sufficiently puzzled, but apparently convinced that 
there was no collusion between the table and the ' mediums.' 

The subsequent history of the spiritual movement is well known. 
It has caused much pain, and harm, and loss. But, like every other 
Event, its good results, realized and prospective, are greater far 
than its evil. It has awakened some from the insanity of indiffer- 
ence, to the insanity of an exclusive devotion to things spiritual. 
But many spiritualists have stopped short of the latter insanity, and 
are better men, in every respect, than they were — better, happier, 
and more hopeful. It has delivered many from the degrading fear 
of death and the future, a fear more prevalent, perhaps, than is 
supposed; for men are naturally and justly ashamed of their fears, 
and do not willingly tell them. Spiritualism, moreover, may be 
among the means by which the way is to be prepared for that gen- 
eral, that earnest, that fearless consideration of our religious sys 
tems to which they will, one day, be subjected, and from which the 
truth in them has nothing to fear, but how much to hope ! 

It was about the same time that the Tribune rendered another 
service to the country, by publishing a fair and full report of the 
first Woman's Convention, accompanying the report with respectful 
and favorable remarks. " It is easy," said the Tribune, " to be 
smart, to be droll, to be facetious, in opposition to the demands of 
these Female Reformers ; and, in decrying assumptions so novel 
and opposed to established habits and usages, a little wit will go a 
great way. But when a sincere republican is asked to say in sober 
earnest what adequate reason he can give for refusing the demand 
J>f women to an equal participation with men in political rights, ha 
must answer, None at all. True, he may say that he believes it 
unwise in them to make the demand — he may say the great major- 
ity desire no such thing ; that they prefer to devote their time to 
19 



290 ASSOCIATION IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

the discharge of home duties and the enjoyment of home delights, 
leaving the functions of legislators, sheriffs, jurymen, militia, to 
their fathers, husbands, brothers; yet if, after all, .the question recurs, 
'But supj)ose the women should generally prefer a complete political 
equality with men, what would you say to that demand?' — the an- 
swer must be, ' I accede to it. However unwise or mistaken the 
demand, it is but the assertion of a natural right, and as such must 
be conceded.' " 

The report of this convention excited much discussion and more 
ridicule. The ridicule has died away, but the discussion of the subject 
of woman's rights and wrongs will probably continue until every 
statute which does wrong to woman is expunged from the laws. 
And if, before voting goes out of fashion, the ladies should gener- 
ally desire the happiness, such as it is, of taking part in elections, 
doubtless that happiness will be conceded them also. 

Meanwhile, an important movement was going on in the office of 
the Tribune. Since the time when Mr. Greeley practically gave up 
Fourierism, he had taken a deep interest in the subject of Associa- 
ted Labor, and in 1848, 1849, and 1850, the Tribune published 
countless articles, showing workingmen how to become their own 
employers, and share among themselves the profits of their work, 
instead of letting them go to swell the gains of a 'Boss.' It was 
but natural that workingmen should reply, as they often did, — 'If 
Association is the right principle on which to conduct business, if it 
is best, safest, and most just to all concerned, why not try it your- 
self, Tribune of the People!' That was precisely what the Tri- 
bune of the People had long meditated, and, in tiie year 1849, he 
and his partner resolved to make the experiment. They were both, 
at the time, in the enjoyment of incomes superfluously large, and 
the contemplated change in their business was, therefore, not in- 
duced by any business exigency. It was the result of a pure, dis- 
interested attachment to principle ; a desire to add practice to 
preaching. 

The establishment was valued by competent judges at a hundred 
thousand dollars, a low valuation ; for its annual profits amounted 
to more than thirty thousand dollars. But newspaper property 
differs from all other. It is won with difficulty, but it is precarious. 
An unlucky paragraph may depreciate it one-half; a perverse edi- 



THE TRIBUNE ASSOCIATION. 291 

cor, destroy it altogether. It is tangible, and yet intangitle. It is 
a body and it is a soul. Horace Greeley might have said, The Tri- 
hune—it is /, with more truth than the French King could boast, 
when he made a similar remark touching himself and the State. 
And Mr. McElrath, glancing round at the types, the subscription 
books, the iron chest, the mighty heaps of paper, and listening to 
the thunder of the press in the vaults below, might have been par- 
doned if he had said. The Tribune— these are the Tribune. 

The property was divided into a hundred shares of a thousand 
dollars each, and a few of them were offered for sale to the leading 
men in each department, the foremen of the composing and press- 
rooms, the chief clerks and bookkeepers, the most prominent edi- 
tors. In all, about twenty shares were thus disposed of, each of the 
original partners selling six. In some cases, the purchasers paid 
only a part of the price in cash, and were allowed to pay the re- 
mainder out of the income of their share. Each share entitled its 
possessor to one vote in the decisions of the company. In the 
course of time, further sales of shares took place, until the original 
proprietors were owners of not more than two-thirds of the con- 
cern. Practically, the power, the controlling voice, belonged still 
to Messrs. Greeley and McElrath ; but the dignity and advantage 
of OWNERSHIP were conferred on all those who exercised authority 
in the several departments. And this was the great good of the 
new system. 

That there is something in being a hired servant which is natur- 
ally and deeply abhorrent to men is shown by the intense desire 
that every hireling manifests to escape from that condition. Many 
are the ties by which man has been bound in industry to his fellow 
man ; but, of them all, that seems to be one of the most unfraternal, 
unsafe, unfair, and demoralizing. The slave, degraded and defraud- 
ed as he is, is safe ; the hireling holds his life at the caprice of 
another man ; for, says Shylock, he takes my life who takes from 
me my means of Hving. "How is business?" said one employer to 
another, a few days ago. "Dull," was the reply. "I hold on 
merely to keep the hands in work." Think of that. Merely to 
keep the hands in work. Merely I As if there could be a better 
reason for ' holding on ;' as if all other reasons combined were not 
bfinitely inferior in weight to this one of keeping men in work \ 



292 ON THE PLATFORM. 

keeping men in heart, keeping men in happiness, keeping men ii 
use ! But universal liirelingism is quite inevitable at present, when 
the governments and institutions most admired may be defined as 
Organized Distrusts. When we are better, and truer, and wiser, we 
shall labor together on very ditFerent terms than are known to Way- 
land's Political Economy. Till then, we must live in pitiful estrange- 
ment from one another, and strive in sorry competition for 
triumphs which bless not when they are gained. 

The experiment of association in the office of the Tribune, has, 
to all appearance, worked well. The paper has improved steadily 
and rapidly. It has lost none of its independence, none of its viva- 
city, and has gained in weight, wisdom, and influence. A vast 
amount of work of various kinds is done in the oflSce, but it is done 
harmoniously and easily. And of all the proprietors, there is not 
one, whether he be editor, printer, or clerk, who does not live in a 
more stylish house, fare more sumptuously, and dress more expen- 
sively, than the Editor in Chief. The experiment, however, is in- 
complete. Nine-tenths of those who assist in the work of the Tri- 
bune are connected with it solely by the tie of wages, which change 
not, whether the profits of the establishment fall to zero or rise to 
the highest notch upon the scale. 

More of association in the next chapter, where our hero appears, 
for the first time, in the character of author. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

ON THE PLATFORM. 

HINTS TOWARDS REFORMS. 

The Lecture System— Comparative popularity of the leading Lecturers— Horace Gree- 
ley at the Tabernacle — His audience — His appearance — His manner of speaking — 
His occasional addresses— The 'Hints' published— Us one subject, the Emancipa- 
tion of Labor— The Problems of the Time— The ' successful' man— The duty of the 
State — The educated class — A narrative for workingmen — The catastrophe. 

LECTUEmG, of late years, has become, in this country, what is 
facetiously termed ' an institution.' And whether we regard it as 8 



THE LECTURE SYSTEM. 293 

means of public instruction, or as a means of making money, we 
cannot deny tha*-. it is an institution of great importance. 

" The bubble reputation," said Sliakspeare. Reputation is a bub- 
ble no longer. Reputation, it has been discovered, will ' draw. 
Reputation alone will draw ! That airy nothing is, through the in- 
strumentality of the new institution, convertible into solid cash, into 
a large pile of solid cash. Small fortunes have been made by it in 
a single winter, by a single lecture or course of lectures. Thack- 
eray, by much toil and continuous production, attained an income 
of seven thousand dollars a year. He crosses the Atlantic, and, in 
one short season, without producing a line, gains thirteen thousand, 
and could have gained twice as much if he had been half as much 
a man of business as he is a man of genius. Ik Marvel writes a 
book or two which brings him great praise and some cash. Then 
he writes one lecture, and not a very good one either, and trans- 
mutes a little of his glory into plenty of money, with which he 
buys leisure to produce a work worthy of his powers. Bayard Tay- 
lor roams over a great part of the habitable and uninhabitable globe. 
He writes letters to the Tribune, very long, very fatiguing to write 
on a journey, and not salable at a high price. He comes home, 
and sighs, perchance, that there are no more lands to visit. " Lec- 
ture!" suggests the Tribune, and he lectures. He carries two or 
three manuscripts in his carpet-bag, equal to half a dozen of his 
Tribune letters in bulk. He ranges the country, far and wide, and 
brings back money enough to carry him ten times round the world. 
It was his reputation that did the business. He earned that money 
by years of adventure and endurance in strange and exceedingly 
hot countries ; he gathered iip his earnings in three months — earn- 
ings which, but for the invention of lecturing, he would never have 
touched a dollar of Park Benjamin, if he sold his satirical poems 
to Putnam's Magazine, would get less than hod-carriers' wages . 
but, selling them directly to the public, at so much a hear^ they 
bring him in, by the time he has supplied all his customers, five 
thousand dollars apiece. Lecturing has been commended as an an- 
tidote to the alleged •docility' of the press, and the alleged dullness^ 
of the pulpit. It may be. /praise it because it enables the man of 
letters to get partial payment from the public for the incalculable 
services which he renders the public. 



294 ON THE PLATFORM. 

Lectures are important, too, as the means by which the public 
are brought into actual contact and acquaintance with the famous 
men of the country. What a delight it is to see the men whoso 
writings have charmed, and moved, and formed us ! And there is 
something in the presence of a man, in the living voice, in the eye^ 
the face, the gesture, that gives to thought and feeling an express- 
ion far more effective than the pen, unassisted by these, can ever at- 
tain. Horace Greeley is aware of this, and he seldom omits an 
opportunity of bringing the influence of his presence to bear in in- 
culcating the doctrines to which he is attached. He has been for 
many years in the habit of writing one or two lectures in the 
course of the season, and delivering them as occasion offered. No 
man, not a professional lecturer, appears oftener on the platform 
than he. In the winter of 1853-4, he lectured, on an average, twice 
a week. He has tliis advantage over the professional lecturer. 
The professional lecturer stands before the public in the same posi- 
tion as an editor ; that is, he is subject to the same necessity to make 
the banquet palatable to those who pay for it, and who will not 
come again if they do not like it. But the man whose position is 
already secure, to whom lecturing is only a subsidiary employment, 
is free to utter the most unpopular truths. 

A statement published last winter, of the proceeds of a course of 
•ectures delivered before the Young Men's Association of Chicago, af- 
fords a test, though an imperfect one, of the popularity of some of our 
lecturers. E. P. Whip[)le, again to borrow the language of the thea- 
ter, ' drew' seventy-nine dollars ; Horace Mann, ninety-tive ; Geo. "W. 
Curtis, eighty-seven ; Dr. Lord, thirty-three ; Horace Greeley, one 
hundred and ninety-three; Theodore Parker, one hundred and 
twelve ; W. H. Channing, thirty-three ; Ralph Waldo Emerson, (did it 
rain ?) thirty-seven; Bishop Potter, forty-five ; John G. Saxe, one hun- 
dred and thirty-five ; W. H. C. Hosraer, twenty-six ; Bayard Tay- 
lor (lucky fellow !) two hundred and fifty-two. 

In large cities, the lecturer has to contend with rival attractions, 
theater, concert, and opera. His performance is subject to a com- 
parison with the sermons of distinguished clergymen, of which some 
are of a quality that no lecture surpasses. To know the iniport- 
ance of the popular lecturer, one must reside in a country town 
the even tenor of whose way is seldom broken by an event of coui- 



THE TABERNACLE. 295 

manding iulerest. The arrival of the grc^u man is expected with 
eagerness. A committee of tlie village magnates meet him at the 
cars and escort him to his lodging. There has been contention who 
should be his entertainer, and the owner of the best house has car- 
ried off the prize. He is introduced to half the adult population. 
There is a buzz and an agitation throughout the town. There is 
talk of the distinguished visitor at all the tea-tables, in the stores, 
and across the palings of garden-fences. The largest church is gen- 
erally the scene of his triumph, and it is a triumph. The words of 
the stranger are listened to with attentive admiration, and the im- 
pression they make is not obliterated by the recurrence of a new 
excitement on the morrow. 

Not so in the city, the hurrying, tumultuous city, where the re- 
appearance of Solomon in all his glory, preceded by Dodworth's 
band, would serve as the leading feature of the newspapers for one 
day, give occasion for a few depreciatory articles on the next, and 
be swept from remembrance by a new astonishment on the third. 
Yet, as we are here, let us go to the Tabernacle and hear Horace 
Greeley lecture. 

The Tabernacle, otherwise called ' The Cave,' is a church which 
looks as little like an ecclesiastical edifice as can be imagined. It 
is a large, circular building, with a floor slanting towards, the plat- 
form — pulpit it has none — and galleries that rise, rank above rank, 
nearly to the ceiling, which is supported by six thick, smooth col- 
umns, that stand round what has been impiously styled the 'pit,' 
like giant spectators of a pigmy show. The platform is so placed, 
that the speaker stands not far from the center of the building, 
where he seems engulfed in a sea of audience, that swells and 
surges all around and far above him. A better place for an orator- 
ical display the city does not afford. It received its cavernous nick- 
name, merely in derision of the economical expenditure of gas that 
its proprietors venture upon when they let the building for an 
evening entertainment ; and the dismal hue of the walls and col- 
umns gives further propriety to the epithet. The Tabernacle will 
contain an audience of three thousand persons. At present, there 
are not more than six speakers and speakeresses in the United 
States who can ' draw ' it full ; and of these, Horace Greeley is not 



296 ON THE PLATFORM. 

one. His number is about twelve hundred. Let us suppose it half 
past seven, and the twelve hundred arrived. 

The audience, we observe, has decidedly the air of a country au- 
dience. Fine ladies and fine gentlemen there are none. Of farmers 
who look as if they took the Weekly Tribune and are in town to- 
night by accident, there are hundreds. City mechanics are present 
in coDsiderable numbers. An ardent-looking young man, with a 
spacious forehead and a turn-over shirt-collar, may be seen here and 
there. A few ladies in Bloomer costume of surpassing ugliness— 
the costume, not the ladies — come down the steep aisles now and 
then, with a well-preserved air of unconsciousness. In that assem- 
bly no one laughs at them. The audience is sturdy, solid-looking, 
appreciative and opinionative, ready for broad views and broad 
humor, and hard hits. Every third man is reading a newspaper, 
for they are men of progress, and must make haste to keep up with 
the times, and the times are fast. Men are going about offering 
books for sale — perhaps Uncle Tom, perhaps a treatise on Water 
Cure, and perhaps Horace Greeley's Hints toward Reforms; but 
certainly something which belongs to the Nineteenth Century. A 
good many free and independent citizens keep their hats on, and 
some 'speak right out in meeting,' as they converse with their 
neighbors. 

But the lecturer enters at the little door under the gallery on the 
right, and when the applause apprizes us of the fact, we catch a 
glimpse of his bald head and sweet face as he wags his hasty way 
to the platform, escorted by a few special adherents of the " Cause" 
he is about to advocate. The newspapers, tjie hats, the conversa- 
tion, the book-selling are discontinued, and silent attention is the 
order of the night. People with ' causes' at their hearts are full of 
business, and on such occasions there are always some preliminary 
announcements to be made — of lectures to come, of meetings to be 
held, of articles to appear, of days to celebrate, of subscriptions to 
be undertaken. These over, the lecturer rises, takes his place at 
the desk, and, while the applause, which never fails on any public 
occasion to greet this man, continues, he opens his lecture, puts on 
his spectacles, and then, looking up at the audience with an express- 
ion of inquiring benignity, waits to begin. 

Generally, Mr. Greeley's attire is in q, condition of the most hope^ 



HIS MANNER OF SPEAKING. 297 

less, and, as it were, elaborate disorder. It would be applauded on 
the stag-e as an excellent ' make-up.' His dress, it is true, is never 
unclean, and seldom unsound ; but he usually presents the appear- 
ance of a man who has been traveling, night and day, for six weeks 
in a stage-coach, stopping long enough for an occasional hasty ablu- 
tion, and a hurried throwing on of clean linen. It must be admit 
ted, however, that when he is going to deliver a set lecture to a cit} 
audience his apparel does bear marks of an attempted adjustment. 
But it is the attempt of a man who does something to which he is 
unaccustomed, and the result is sometimes more surprising than the 
neglect. On the present occasion, the lecturer, as he stands there 
waiting for the noise to subside, has the air of a farmer, not in his 
Sunday clothes, but in that intermediate rig, once his Sunday suit, 
in which he attends "the meeting of the trustees," announced last 
Sunday at church, and which he dons to attend court when a 
cause is coming on that he is interested in. A most respect- 
able man ; but the tie of his neckerchief was executed in a fit of 
abstraction, without the aid of a looking-glass; perhaps in the dark, 
when he dressed himself this morning before da.y-light — to adopt 
his own emphasis. 

Silence is restored, and the lecture begins. The voice of the 
speaker is more like a woman's than a man's, high-pitched, small, 
soft, but heard with ease in the remotest part of the Tabernacle. 
His first words are apologetic ; they are uttered in a deprecatory, 
shghtly-beseeching tone ; and their substance is, ' You must n't, my 
friends, expect fine words from a rough, busy man hke me ; yet such 
observations as I have been able hastily to note down, I will now 
submit, though wishing an abler man stood at this moment in my 
shoes.' He proceeds to read his discourse in a plain, utterly unam- 
bitious, somewhat too rapid manner, pushing on through any mod- 
erate degree of applause without waiting. If there is a man in the 
world who is more un-oratorical than any other — and of course 
there is such a man — and if that man be not Horace Greeley, I know 
not where he is to be found. A plain man reading plain sense to 
plain men ; a practical man stating quietly to practical men the 
results of his thought and observation, stating what he entirely be 
lieves, what he wants the world to believe, what he knows will not 
be generally believed in his time, what he is quitt sure will one day 



298 ON THE PLATFORM. 

be univ^ersally believed, and what he is perfectly patient with the 
world for not believing yet. Tliere is no gesticulation, no increased 
animation at important passages, no glow got up for the closing 
paragraphs; no aiming at any sort of effect whatever; no warmth 
of personal feeling against opponents. There is a shrewd humor in 
the man, however, and his hits excite occasional bursts of laughter; 
but there is no bitterness in his humor, not the faintest approach to 
it. An impressive or pathetic passage now and then, which loses 
none of its effect from the simple, plaintive way in which it is 
uttered, deepens the silence which prevails in the hall, at the end 
eliciting warm and general applause, which the speaker 'improves' 
by drinking a little water. The attention of the audience never 
flags, and the lecture concludes amid the usual tokens of decided 
approbation. 

Horace Greeley is, indeed, no orator. Yet some who value 
oratory less than any other kind of bodily labor, and whom the 
tricks of elocution offend, except when they are performed on the 
stage, and even there they should be concealed, have expressed 
the opinion that Mr. Greeley is, strictly speaking, one of the hest 
speakers this metropolis can boast. A man, they say, never does 
a weaker, an unworthier, a more self-demoralizing thing than when 
he speaks for effect ; and of this vice Horace is less guilty than any 
speaker we are in the habit of hearing, except Ralph "Waldo 
Emerson. Not that he does not make exaggerated statements; not 
that he does not utter sentiments which are only half true ; not 
that he does not sometimes indulge in language which, when read^ 
savors of the high-flown. What I mean is, that his public speeches 
are literally transcripts of the mind whence they emanate. 

At public meetings and public dinners Mr. Greeley is a frequent 
speaker. His name usually comes at the end of the report, intro- 
duced with " Horace Greeley being loudly called for, made a few 
remarks to the following purport." The call is never declined ; 
nor does he ever speak without saying something; and when ho 
has said it he resumes his seat., He has a way, particularly of late 
years, of coming to a meeting when it is nearly over, delivering one 
of his short, enlightening addresses, and then embracing the first 
opportunity that offers of taking an unobserved departure. 

A few words with regard to the subjects upon which Horace 



299 

Greeley most loves to discourse. In 1850, a volume, contuning 
ten of his lectures and twenty shorter essays, appeared from the 
press of the Messrs. Harpers, under the title of " Hints toward 
Reforms." It has had a sale of 2,000 copies. Two or three other 
lectures have been published in pamphlet form, of which the one 
entitled " What the Sister Arts teach as to Farming," delivered be- 
fore the Indiana State Agricultural Society, at its annual fair at 
Lafayette in October, 1853, is perhaps the best that Mr. Greeley 
has written. But let us glance for a moment at the ' Hints.' The 
title-page contains three quotations or mottoes, appropriate to the 
book, and characteristic of the author. They are these : 

" Hasten the day, just Heaven ! 
Accomplish thy design, 
And let the blessings Thou hast freely given 

Freely on all men shine ; 
Till Equal Rights be equally enjoyed, 
And human power for human good employed; 
Till Law, and not the Sovereign, rule sustain 
And Peace and Virtue undisputed reign. HenryWaee." 

" Listen not to the everlasting Conservative, who pines and whines at 
every attempt to drive him from the spot where he has so lazily cast his an- 
chor. . . . Every abuse must be abolished. The whole system must be 
settled on the right basis. Settle it ten times and settle it wrong, you will 
have the work to begin again. Be satisfied with nothing but the complete 
tnfranchisement of Humanity, and the restoration of man to the image of 
lis God. Henry Ward Beecheb." 

"Once the welcome Light has broken, 

Who shall say 
What the unimagined glories 

Of the day 7 
What the evil that shall perish 

In its ray 1 
Aid the dawning. Tongue and Pen ! 
Aid it, hopos of honest men ! 
Aid it, Paper ! aid it, Type ! 
Aid it, for the hour is ripe ! 
And our earnest must not slacken 

Into play : 
Men of Thought, and Men of Action, 

Clear the way ! Charles Mackat." 



300 ON THE PLATFORM. 

The dedication is no less characteristic. I copy that also, as 
throwing light upon the aim and manner of tl e man : 

" To the generous, the hopeful, the loving, who, firmly and joyfully believ- 
ing in the impartial and boundless goodness of our Father, trust, that the 
errors, the crimes, and the miseries, which have long rendered earth a hell, 
shall yet be swallowed up and forgotten, in a far exceeding and unmeasured 
reign of truth, purity, and bliss, this volume is respectfully and affectionately 
inscribed by The Author." 

Earth is not ' a hell.' The expression appears very harsh and 
very unjust. Earth is not a hell. Its sum of happiness is infinitely 
greater than its sum of misery. It contains scarcely one creature 
that does not, in the course of its existence, enjoy more than it 
suffers, that does not do a greater number of right acts than 
wrong. Yet the world as it is, compared with the world as a 
benevolent heart icishes it to be, is hell-like enough ; so we may, in 
this sense, but in this sense alone, accept the language of the dedi- 
cation. 

The preface informs us, that the lectures were prompted by invi- 
tations to address Popular Lyceums and Young Men's Associations, 
'generally those of the humbler class,' existing in country villages 
and rural townships. "They were written," says the author, "in 
the years from 18-i2 to 1848, inclusive, each in haste, to fulfill some 
engagement already made, for which preparation had been delayed, 
under the pressure of seeming necessities, to the latest moment 
allowable. A calling whose exactions are seldom intermitted for a 
day, never for a longer period, and whose requirements, already ex- 
cessive, seem perpetually to expand and increase, may well excuse 
the distraction of thought and rapidity of composition which it 
renders inevitable. At no time has it seemed practicable to devote 
a wliole day, seldom a full half day, to the production of any of 
the essays. Not until months after the last of them was written 
did the idea of collecting and printing them in this shape suggest 
itself, and a hurried perusal is all that has since been given 
them." 

The eleven published lectures of Horace Greeley which lie before 
me, are variously entitled; but their subject is one; his subject ia 
ever the same ; the object of his public Hfe is single. It is the 



THE EMANCIPATION OF LABOR 301 

* Emancipation OF Laboe;' its emancipation from ignorance, vice, 
servitude, insecurity, poverty. This is his chosen, only themo, 
whether he speaks from the platform, or writes for the Tribune. If 
slavery is the subject of discourse, the Dishonor which Slavery does 
to Labor is the light in which he prefers to present it. If protec- 
tion — he demands it in the name and for the good of American 
worMngmen, that their minds may be quickened by diversified em- 
ployment, their position secured by abundant employment, the 
farmers enriched by markets near at hand. If Learning — he la- 
ments the unnatural divorce between Learning and Labor, and ad- 
vocates their re-union in manual-labor schools. If 'Human Life' — 
he cannot refrain from reminding his hearers, that " the deep want 
of the time is, that the vast resources and capacities of Mind, the 
far-stretching powers of Genius and of Science, be brought to bear 
practically and intimately on Agriculture, the Mechanic Arts, and 
all the now rude and simple processes of Day-Labor, and not 
merely that these processes may be perfected and accelerated, 
but that the benefits of the improvement may accrue in at least 
equal measure to those whose accustomed means of livelihood — 
scanty at best — are interfered with and overturned by the cliange." 
If the 'Formation of Character' — he calls upon men who aspire 
to possess characters equal to the demands of the time, to " question 
with firm speech all institutions, observances, customs, that they 
may determine by what mischance or illusion thriftless Pretense 
and Knavery shall seem to batten on a brave Prosperity, while La- 
bor vainly begs employment. Skill lacks recompense, and Worth 
pines for bread." If Popular Education — he reminds us, that 
"the narrow, dingy, squalid tenement, calculated to repel any 
visitor but the cold and the rain, is hardly fitted to foster lofty 
ideas of Life, its Duties and its Aims. And he who is constrained 
to ask each morning, ' Where shall I find food for the day V is 
at best unlikely often to ask, 'By what good deed shall the day 
be signalized V " Or, in a lighter strain, he tells the story of Tom 
and the Colonel. " Tom," said a Colonel on the Rio Grande to 
one of his command, "how can so brave and good a soldier as 
you are so demean himself as to get drunk at every opportu- 
nity?" — "Colone !" replied the private, "how can you expect aU 



302 ON THE i^LATFORM. 

the virtues that adorn the human character for seven dollars a 
month ?" That anecdote well illustrates one side of Horace Greeley's 
view of life. 

The problems which, he says, at present puzzle the knotted brain 
of Toil all over the world, which incessantly cry out for solution, 
and can never more be stifled, but will become even more vehe 
luent, till they are solved, are these : 

" Why should those l)y whose toil all comforts and luxuries are 
produced^ or made available^ enjoy so scanty a share of them ? Why 
should a man ahle and eager to worh^ever stand idle for want of em- 
ployment in a world where so much needful work impatiently awaits 
the doing ? Why should a man he required to surrender something 
of his independence in accepting the employment which will enable 
him to earn by honest effort the bread of his family ? Why should 
the man who faithfully labors for another^ and receives therefor less 
than the product of his labor^ be currently held the obliged party ^ 
rather than he who buys the work and makes a good, bargain of it ? 
\u short, Why should Speculation and Scheming ride so jauntily in 
their carriages, splashing honest Work as it trudges humbly and 
wearily by on foot ?" 

Who is there so estranged from humanity as never to have pon- 
dered questions similar to these, whether he ride jauntily in a car- 
riage, or trudge wearily on foot ? They have been proposed in for- 
mer ages as abstractions. They are discussed now as though the 
next generation were to answer them, practically and triumph- 
antly. 

First of all, the author of Hints toward Reforms admits frankly, 
and declares emphatically, that the obstacle to the workingman's 
elevation is the workingman's own improvidence, ignorance, and 
unworthiness. This side of the case is well presented in a sketch 
of the career of the ' successful' man of business : 

"A keen observer," says the lecturer, "could have picked him out from 
Among his schoolfellows, and said, ' Here is the lad who will die a bank-presi 
dent, owning factories and blocks of stores.' Trace his history closely," he 
continues, " and you find that, in hia boyhood, he was provident and frugal — 
that he shunned expense and dissipation — that he feasted and quaffed seldom, 



THE PROBLEMS OF THE TIME. 303 

unless at others' cost — that he was rarely seen at balls or froiics — that he was 
diligent in study and in business — that he did not hesitate to do an uncnniforta- 
ble job, if it bade fair to be profitable — that he husbanded his hours and made 
each count one, eitifer in earning or in preparing to work efficiently. He 
rarely or never stood idle because the business offered him was esteemed un- 
genteel or disagreeable — he laid up a few dollars during his minority, which 
proved a sensible help to him on going into business for himself — he married 
seasonably, prudently, respectably — he lived frugally and delved steadily 
until it clearly became him to live better, and until he could employ his time 
to better advantage than at the plow or over the bench. Thus his first thou- 
sand dollars came slowly but surely ; the next more easily and readily by the 
help of the former ; the next of course more easily still; until now he adds 
thousands to his hoard with little apparent effort or care. * * * * Talk 
to such a man as this of the wants of the poor, and he will answer you, that 
their sons can afford to smoke and drink freely, which he at their age could 
not ; and that he now meets many of these poor in the market, buying luxu- 
ries that he cannot afford. Dwell on the miseries occasioned by a dearth of 
employment, and he will reply that he never encountered any such obstacle 
when poor ; for when he could find nothing better, he cleaned streets or stables, 
and when he could not command twenty dollars a month, he fell to work as 
heartily and cheerfully for ten or five. In vain will you seek to explain to 
him that his rare faculty both of doing and of finding to do — his wise adapta- 
tion of means to ends in all circumstances, his frugality and others' improvi- 
dence — are a part of your case — that it is precisely because all are not creat- 
ed so handy, so thrifty, so worldly-wise, as himself, that you seek so to modify 
the laws and usages of Society that a man may still labor, steadily, efficiently, 
and live comfortably, although his youth was not improved to the utmost, and 
though his can never be the hand that transmutes all it touches to gold. Fail- 
ing here, you urge that at least his children should be guaranteed an unfail- 
ing opportunity to learn and to earn, and that they, surely, should not suffer 
nor be stifled in ignorance because of their parent's imperfections. Still you 
talk in Greek to the man of substance, unless he be one of the few who have, 
in acquiring wealth, outgrown the idolatry of it, and learned to regard it truly 
as a means of doing good, and not as an end of earthly effort. If he be a man 
of wealth merely, still cherishing the spirit which impelled him to his life-long 
endeavor, the world appears to him a vast battle-field, on which some must 
win victory and glory, while to others are accorded shattered joints and dis- 
comfiture, and the former could not be, or would lose their zest, without the 
latter." 

Such is the ' case' of the conservative. So looks the battle of 
life to the victor. With equal complacency the hawk may philoso- 
phize while he is digesting the chicken. But the chicken was of a 



304 ON THE Platform. 

different opinion ; and died squeaking it to the waving tree-tops, as 
he was borne irresistibly along to where the hawk could most con- 
veniently devour him. 

Mr. Greeley does not attempt to refute the argument of the pros- 
perous conservative. He dwells for a moment upon the fact, that 
while life is a battle in which men fight, not for^ but against each 
other, the victors must necessarily be few and ever fewer, the vic- 
tims numberless and ever more hopeless. Kesting his argument 
upon the evident fact that the majority of mankind are poor, unsafe, 
and uninstructed, he endeavors to show how the condition of the 
masses can be alleviated by legislation, and how by their own co- 
operative exertions. The State, he contends, should ordain, and the 
law should be fundamental, that no man may own more than a cer- 
tain, very limited extent of land ; that the State should fix a defini- 
tion to the phrase, ' a day's work ;' that the State should see to it, 
that no child grows up in ignorance ; that the State is bound to 
prevent the selling of alcoholic beverages. Those who are inter- 
ested in such subjects will find them amply and ably treated by 
Mr. Greeley in his published writings. 

But there are two short passages in the volume of Hints toward 
Reforms, which seem to contain the essence of Horace Greeley's 
teachings as to the means by which the people are to be elevated, 
spiritually and materially. The following is extracted from the lec- 
ture on the Relations of Learning to Labor. It is addressed to the 
educated and professional classes. 

*' Why," asks Horace Greeley, " should not the educated class create an at- 
mosphere, not merely of exemplary morals and refined manners, but of pal- 
pable utility and blessing 1 Why should not the clergyman, the doctor, tho 
lawyer, of a country town be not merely the patrons and coramenders of 
every generous idea, the teachers and dispensers of all that is novel in science 
or noble in philosophy — examplars of integrity, of amenity, and of an all- 
pervading humanity to those around them — but even in a more material 
sphere regarded and blessed as universal benefactors 1 Why should they not 
be universally — as I rejoice to say that some of them are — models of wisdom 
and thrift in agriculture — their farms and gardens silent but most eflfective 
preachers of the benefits of forecast, calculation, thorough knowledge and 
faithful application 1 Nay, more : Why should not the educated class be 
everywhere teachers, through lectures, essays, conversations, as well as prac- 
tically, of those great and important truths of nature, which chemistry and 



THE EDUCATED CLASS. 305 

other sciences aio just revealing to bless the industrial world? Why should 
they not unobtrusively and freely teach the farmer, the mechanic, the worker 
in any capacity, how best to summon the blind forces of the elements to his 
aid, and how most effectually to render them subservient to his needs ? AIJ 
this is clearly within the power of the educated class, if truly educated ; aU 
this is clearly within the sphere of duty appointed them by providence. Le/ 
them but do it, and they will stand where they ought to stand, at the head of 
the community, the directors of public opinion, and the universally recog 
nized benefactors of the race. 

" I stand before an audience in good part of educated men, and I plead fo7 
the essential independence of their class — not for their sakes only or mainly 
but for the sake of mankind. I see clearly, or I am strangely bewildered, a 
deep-rooted and wide-spreading evil which is palsying the influence and par- 
alyzing the exertions of intellectual and even moral superiority all over our 
country. The lawyer, so far at least as his livelihood is concerned, is too gen- 
erally but a lawyer ; he must live by law, or he has no means of living at all. 
So with the doctor ; so alas ! with the pastor. He, too, often finds himself 
surrounded by a large, expensive family, few or none of whom have been sys- 
tematically trained to earn their bread in the sweat of their brows, and who, 
even if approaching maturity in life, lean on him for a subsistence. This son 
must be sent to the academy, and that one to college ; this daughter to an ex- 
pensive boarding-school, and that must have a piano — and all to be defrayed 
from his salary, which, however liberal, is scarcely or barely adequate to meet 
the demands upon it. How shall this man — for man, after all, he is — with ex- 
penses, and cares, and debts pressing upon him — hope to be at all times 
faithful to the responsibilities of his high calling ! He may speak ever so flu- 
ently and feelingly against sin in the abstract, for that cannot give offense to 
the most fastidiously sensitive incumbent of the richly furnished hundred-dol- 
lar pews. But will he dare to rebuke openly, fearlessly, specially, the darling 
and decorous vices of his most opulent and liberal parishioners — to say to the 
honored dispenser of liquid poison, ' Your trade is murder, and your wealth 
the price of perdition !' — To him who amasses wealth by stinting honest labor 
of its reward and grinding the faces of the poor, ' Do not mock God by put- 
ting your reluctant dollar into the missionary box — there is no such heathen 
in New Zealand as yourself!' — and so to every specious hypocrite around him, 
who patronizes the church to keep to windward of his conscience and freshen 
the varnish on his character, ' Thou art the man !' I tell you, friends ! he 
will not, for he cannot afford to, be thoroughly faithful ! One in a thousand 
may be, and hardly more. We do not half somprehend the profound signifi- 
cance of that statute of the old church whicti inflexibly enjoins celibacy on her 
clergy. The very existence of the church, as a steadfast power above the 
multitude, giving law to the people and not receiving its law day by day from 
them, depends on its maintenance. And if we are ever to enjoy a Christian 
20 



306 ON THE PLATFORM. 

ministry rt-hich shall systematically, promptly, fearlessly war upon every 
shape and disguise of evil— which shall fearlessly grapple with war and slave- 
ry, and every loathsome device by which man seeks to glut his appetites at 
the expense of his brother's well-being, it will be secured to us through the 
instrumentality of the very reform I advocate — a reform which shall render 
the clergyman independent of his parishioners, and enable him to say man- 
fully to all, ' You may cease to pay, but I shall not cease to preach, so long aa 
you have sins to reprove, and I have strength to reprove them ! I live in 
good part by the labor of my hands, and can do so wholly whenever that shall 
become necessary to the fearless discharge of my duty. 

" A single illustration more, and I draw this long dissertation to a close. I 
shall speak now more directly to facts within my own knowledge, and which 
have made on me a deep and mournful impression. I speak to your experi- 
ence, too, friends of the Pheoix and Union Societies — to your future if not to 
your past experience — and I entreat you to heed me ! Every year sends forth 
from our Colleges an army of brave youth, who have nearly or quite exhausted 
their little means in procuring what is termed an education, and must now find 
some remunerating employment to sustain them while they are more specially 
fitting themselves for and inducting themselves into a Profession. Some of 
them find and are perforce contented with some meager clerkship ; but the 
great body of them turn their attention to Literature — to the instruction of 
their juniors in some school or family, or to the instruction of the world through 
the Press. Hundreds of them hurry at once to the cities and the journals, 
seeking employment as essayists or collectors of intelligence — bright visions 
of Fame in the foreground, and the gaunt wolf Famine hard at their heels. 
Alas for them! they do not see that the very circumstances under which they 
seek admission to the calling they have chosen almost forbid the idea of their 
succeeding in it. They do not approach the public with thoughts struggling 
for utterance, but with stomachs craving bread. They seek the Press, not that 
they may proclaim through it what it would cost their lives to repress, but 
that they may preserve their souls to their bodies, at some rate. Do you not 
see under what immense disadvantages one of this band enters upon his selected 
vocation, if he has the rare fortune to find or make a place in it? He is sur- 
rounded, elbowed on every side by anxious hundreds, eager to obtain employ- 
ment on any terms; he must write not what he feels, but what another needs; 
must ' regret' or ' rejoice' to order, working for the day, and not venturing to 
utter a thought which the day does not readily approve. And can you fancy 
that is the foundation on which to build a lofty and durable renown — a brave 
and laudable success of any kind 7 I tell you no, young friends ! — the farthest 
from it possible. There is scarcely any position more perilous to generous 
impulses and lofty aims — scarcely any which more eminently threatens to sink 
the Man in the mere schemer and'stiiver for subsistence and selfish gratifica- 
tion. I say, then, in deep earnestness, to every youth who hopes or desires t« 



THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. 307 

become usel 1 to his Race or in any degree eminent through Literature, Seek 
first of all things a position of pecuniary independence ; learn to live by the 
labor of your hands, the sweat of your face, as a necessary step toward the 
career you contemplate. If you can earn but three shillings a day by rugged 
yet moderate toil, learn to live contentedly on two shillings, and so preserve 
your mental faculties fresh and unworn to read, to observe, to think, thus pre- 
paring yourself for the ultimate path you have chosen. At length, when a 
mind crowded with discovered or elaborated truths will have utterance, begin 
to write sparingly and tersely for the nearest suitable periodical — no matter 
how humble and obscure — if the thought is in you, it will find its way to those 
who need it. Seek not compensation for this utterance until compensation 
shall seek you ; then accept it if an object, and not involving too great sacri- 
fices of independence and disregard of more immediate duties. In this way 
alone can something like the proper dignity of the Literary Character be re- 
stored and maintained. But while every man who either is or believes him- 
self capable of enlightening others, appears only anxious to sell his faculty at 
the earliest moment and for the largest price, I cannot hope that the Public 
will be induced to regard very profoundly either the lesson or the teacher." 

Such is the substance of Horace Greeley's message to the literary 
and refined. 

I turn now to the lecture on the Organization of Labor, and 
select from it a short narrative, the perusal of which will enable 
the reader to understand the nature of Mr. Greeley's advice to 
working-men. The story may hecome historically valuable ; be- 
cause the principle which it illustrates may be destined to play a 
great part in the Future of Industry. It may be true, that the 
despotic principle is not essential to permanence and prosperity, 
though nothing has yet attained a condition of permanent pros- 
perity except by virtue of it. But here is the narrative, and it is 
worthy of profound consideration : 

" The first if not most important movement to be made in advance of our 
present Social position is the Organization of Labor. This is to be effect- 
ed by degrees, by steps, by installments. I propose here, in place of setting 
forth any formal theory or system of Labor Reform, simply to narrate what I 
saw and heard of the history and state of an experiment now in progress near 
Cincinnati, and which differs in no material respects from some di^zen or score 
of others already commenced in various parts of the United States, not to 
speak of twenty times as many established by the Working Men of Paris and 
other portions of France. 

" The business of Iron-Molding, casting, or whatever it may be called 



308 ON THE PLATFORM. 

is one of the most extensive and thrifty of the manufactures of Cincinnati, and 
I believe the labor employed therein is quite as well rewarded as Labor gen- 
erally. It is entirely paid by the piece, according to an established scale of 
prices, so that each workman, in whatever department of the business, is paid 
according to his individual skill and industry, not a rough average of what is 
supposed to be earned by himself and others, as is the case where work is 
paid for at so much per day, week or month. I know no reason why the Iron- 
Molders of Cincinnati should not have been as well satisfied with the old 
ways as anybody else. 

"Yet the system did not 'work well,' even for them. Beyond the general 
unsteadiness of demand for Labor and the ever-increasing pressure of compe- 
tition, there was a pretty steadily recurring ' dull season,' commencing about 
the first of January, when the Winter's call for stoves, &c., had been sup- 
plied, and holding on for two or three months, or until the Spring business 
opened. In this hiatus, the prior savings of the Holders were generally con- 
sumed — sometimes less, but perhaps oftener more — so that, taking one with 
another, they did not lay up ten dollars per annum. By-and-by came a col- 
lision respecting wages and a ' strike,' wherein the Journeymen tried for 
months the experiment of running their heads against a stone wall. How 
they came out of it, no matter whether victors or vanquished, the intelligent 
reader will readily guess. I never heard of any evils so serious and com- 
plicated as those which eat out the heart of Labor being cured by doing 
nothing. 

" At length — but I believe after the strike had somehow terminated — some 
of the Journeymen Holders said to each other : ' Standing idle is not the 
true cure for our grievances : why not employ ourselves'?' They finally con- 
cluded to try it, and, in the dead of the Winter of 1847-8, when a great many 
of their trade were out of employment,, the business being unusually depressed, 
they formed an association under the General Hanufacturing Law of Ohio 
•'which is very similar to that of New York), and undertook to establish the 
Journeymen Holders' Union Foundry. There were about twenty of 
them who put their hands to the work, and the whole amount of capital they 
could scrape together was two thousand one hundred dollars, held in shares 
of twenty- five dollars each. With this they purchased an eligible piece of 
{:round, directly on the bank of the Ohio, eight miles below Cincinnati, with 
which ' the Whitewater Canal' also affords the means of ready and cheap 
•iommunication With their capital they bought some patterns, flasks, an en- 
i?ine and tools, paid for their ground, and five hundred dollars on their first 
ouilding, which was erected for them partly on long credit by a firm in Cin- 
cinnati, who knew that the property was a perfect security for so much of its 
wst, and decline taking credit for any benevolence in the matter. Their iron, 
•oal, Ac, to commence upon were entirely and necessarily bought on credit. 

" Having elected Directors, a Foreman, and a Business Agent (the last to 



A NARRATIVE FOR WORKINGMEN. 309 

open a store in Cincinnati, buy stock, sell wares, Ac.) the Journeymen's Union 
set to work, in August, 1848. Its accommodations were then meager ; they 
have since been gradually enlarged by additions, until their Foundry is now 
the most commodious on the river. Their stock of patterns, flasks, &c., has 
grown to be one of the best ; while their arrangements for unloading coal and 
iron, sending off stoves, coking coal, Ac, &c., are almost perfect. They com- 
menced with ten associates actually at work ; the number has gradually grown 
to forty ; and there is not a better set of workmen in any foundry in America. 
T profess to know a little as to the quality of castings, and there are no better 
than may be seen in the Foundry of ' Industry ' and its store at Cincinnati. 
And there is obvious reason for this in the fact that every workman is a pro- 
prietor in the concern, and it is his interest to turn out not only his own work 
in the best order, but to take care that all the rest is of like quality. All is 
carefully examined before it is sent away, and any found imperfect is con- 
demned, the loss falling on the causer of it. But there is seldom any deserv- 
ing condemnation. 

*' A strict account is kept with every member, who is credited for all he does 
according to the Cincinnati Scale of Prices, paid so much as he needs of his 
earnings in money, the balance being devoted to the extension of the concern 
and the payment of its debts, and new stock issued to him therefor. When- 
ever the debts shall have been paid off, and an adequate supply of implements, 
teams, stock, <fco., bought or provided for, they expect to pay every man his 
earnings weekly in cash, as of course they may. I hope, however, they will 
prefer to buy more land, erect thereon a most substantial and commodious 
dwelling, surround it with a garden, shade-trees, &c., and resolve to live as 
well as work like brethren. There are few uses to which a member can put a 
hundred dollars which might not as well be subserved by seventy-five if the 
money of the whole were invested together. 

" The members were earning when I visited them an average of fifteen dol- 
lars per week, and meant to keep doing so. Of course they work hard. Many 
of them live inside of four dollars per week, none go beyond eight. Their 
Business Agent is one of themselves, who worked with them in the Foundry 
for some months after it was started. He has often been obliged to report, ' I 
can pay you no money this week,' and never heard a murmur in reply. On 
one occasion he went down to say, ' There are my books ; you see what I have 
received and where most of it has gone ; here is one hundred dollars, which is 
all there is left.' The members consulted, calculated, and made answer: 'We 
can pay our board so as to get through another week with fifty dollars, and 
you had better take back the other fifty, for the business may need it before 
the week is through.' When I was there, there had been an Iron note to pay, 
ditto a Coal, and a boat-load of coal to lay in for the winter, sweeping off all 
the money, so that for more than three weeks no man had had a dollar. Yet 
no one had thought of complaining, for all knew that the delay was dictated, 



310 ON THE PLATFORM. 

not by another's interest, but their own. They knew, too, that the assurance 
of their payment did not depend on the frugality or extravagance of some 
employer, who might swamp the proceeds of his business and their labor in an 
unlucky speculation, or a sumptuous dwelling, leaving them to whistle for 
their money. There were their year's earnings visibly around them in stoves 
and hollow ware, for which they had abundant and eager demand in Cincin- 
nati, but which a break in the canal had temporarily kept back ; in iron and 
coal for the winter's work ; in the building over their heads and the imple- 
ments in their hands. And while other molders have had work ' off and on,' 
according to the state of the business, no member of the Journeymen's Union 
has stood idle a day for want of work since their Foundry was first started. 
Of course, as their capital increases, the danger of being compelled to suspend 
work at any future day grows less and less continually. 

" The ultimate capital of the Journeymen's Union Foundry (on the pre- 
sumption that the Foundry is to stand by itself, leaving every member to pro- 
vide his own home, &c ) is to be eighteen thousand dollars, of which seven 
thousand dollars has already been paid in, most of it in labor. The remain- 
der is all subscribed by the several associates, and is to be paid in labor as fast 
as possible. That done, every man may be paid in cash weekly for his work, 
and a dividend on his stock at the close of each business year. The workers 
have saved and invested from three hundred dollars to six hundred dollars 
each since their commencement in August of last year, though those who 
have joined since the start have of course earned less. Few or none had laid 
by sn much in five to ten years' working for others as they have in one year 
working for themselves. The total value of their products up to the time of 
my visit is thirty thousand dollars, and they were then making at the rate of 
five thousand dollars' worth per month, which they do not mean to diminish- 
All the profits of the business, above the cost of doing the work at journey- 
men's wages, will be distributed among the stockholders in dividends. The 
oflBcers of the Union are a Managing Agent, Foreman of the Foundry, and 
five Directors, chosen annually, but who can be changed meantime in case of 
necessity. A Reading-Room and Library were to be started directly ; a spa- 
cious boarding-house (though probablj' not owned by the Union) will go up 
this season. No liquor is sold within a long distance of the Union, and there 
is little or no demand for any. Those original members of the Union who 
were least favorable to Temperance have seen fit to sell out and go away. 

" Now is it reasonable that the million or so of hireling laborers throughout 
our country who have work when it suits others' convenience to employ them, 
and must stand idle perforce when it does not, can read the above simple nar- 
ration — which I have tried to render as lucid as possible — and not be moved 
to action thereby 7 Suppose they receive all they earn when employed — 
which of course they generally do not, or how could employers grow rich by 
merely buying their labor and selling it again 1 — should not the simple fact 



THE CATASTROPHE. gH 

that these Associated Workers never lack employment when they desire itj 
and never ask any master's leave to refrain from working when they see fit, 
arrest public attention ? Who is such a slave in soul that he wruld not rather 
be an equal member of a commonwealth than the subject of a despotism 1 
Who would not like to taste the sweets of Liberty on work-days as well as 
holidays 1 Is there a creature so abject that he considers all this mere poetry 
and moonshine, which a little hard experience will dissipate ? Suppose the 
Cincinnati Iron-Molders' Association should break down, either through some 
defect in its organization or some dishonesty or other misconduct on the part 
of one or more of its members — w' at would that prove 7 AVould it any more 
prove the impracticability of Industrial Associations than the shipwreck and 
death of Columbus, had such a disaster occurred on his second or third voyage 
to America, would have disproved the existence of the New World 1 



The story is incomplete ; the catastrophe is wanting. It can be 
told in one word, and that word \s failure/ The Union existed 
about two years. It then broke up, not, as I am very positively as- 
sured, from any defect in the system upon which it was conducted ; 
but from a total stagnation in the market, which not only ruined the 
co-operators, but others engaged in the same business. They made 
castings on the co-operative principle, made them well, made them 
as long as anybody would buy them ; then — stopped. 

The reader of the volume from which I have quoted will find in 
it much that does less honor to the autlior's head than his heart. 
But I defy any one to read it, and not respect the man that wrote 
it. The kernel of the book is sound. The root of the matter is 
there. It shows Horace Greeley to be a man whose interest in hu- 
man welfare is sincere, habitual, innate, and indestructible. We all 
know what is the usual course of a person who — as the stupid 
phrase is — ' rises' from the condition of a manual laborer to a posi- 
tion of influence and wealth. If our own observation were not 
suflScient, Thackeray and Curtis have told the whol-e world the sorry 
history of the modern snob ; how he ignores his origin, and bends 
all his little soul to the task of cutting a figure in the circles to 
which he has gained admittance. 

Twenty men are suflfocating in a dungeon — one man, by climb- 
ing upon the shoulders of soine of his companions, and assisted up 
still higher by the st'-ength of others, escapes, breathes the pure air 
'>f heaven, exults in freedom ! Does he not, instantly and with all 



312 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

his might, strive for the rescue of his late companions, still suflPer* 
ing ? Is he not prompt with rope, and pole, and ladder, and food, 
and cheering words? No — the caitiff wanders off to seek his pleas- 
ure, and makes haste to remove from his person, and his memory 
too, every trace of his recent misery. This it is to be a snob. 
No treason like this clings to the skirts of Horace Greeley. He has 
stood by his Order. The landless, the hireling, the uninstructed — 
he was their Companion once — he is their Champion now. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

rhe Voyage out— First impressions of England— Opening of the Exhibition— Charac- 
teristic observalioiis— He attends a grand Banquet— He sees the Sights— He spealw 
at Exeter Hall — The Play at Devonshire House — Robert Owen's birth-day — Horace 
Greeley before a Committee of the House of Commons — He throws light upon the 
subject — Vindicates the American Press— Journey to Paris — The Sights of Paris — 
The Opera and Ballet— A false Prophet— His opinion of the French— Journey to 
Italy— Anecdute— A nap in the Diligence— Arrival at Rome— In the Galleries- 
Scene in the Coliseum— To England again— Triumph of the American Reaper— A 
week in Ireland and Scotland— His opinion of the English— Homeward Bound- 
Hie arrival— The Extra Tribune. 

" The thing called Crystal Palace !" This was the language 
A^hich the intense and spiritual Carlyle thought proper to employ 
on the only occasion when he alluded to the World's Fair of 1851. 
And Horace Greeley appears, at first, to have thought little of 
Prince Albert's scheme, or at least to have taken little interest in it. 
"We mean," he said, " to attend the World's Fair at London, with 
very little interest in the show generally, or the people whom it 
will collect, but with special reference to a subject which seems to 
ns of great and general importance — namely, the improvements re- 
cently made, or now being made, in the modes of dressing flax and 
hemp and preparing them to be spun and woven by steam or water- 
power." " Only adequate knowledge," he thought, was necessary 
to give a new and profitable direction to Free Labor, both agricul- 
tural and manufacturing." 



THE VOYAGE OUT. 313 

Iccordingly, Horace Greeley was one of the two thousand 
A.mericans who crossed the Atlantic for the purpose of attending 
the World's Fair, and, like many others, he seized the opportuni- 
ty to make a hurried tour of the most accessible parts of the Eu- 
ropean Continent. It was the longest holiday of his life. Holi- 
day is not the word, however. His sky was changed, but not the 
man ; and his labors in Europe were as incessant and arduous as 
they had been in America, nor unlike them in kind. A strange ap- 
parition he among the elegant and leisurely Europeans. Since 
Franklin's day, no American had appeared in Europe whose ' style' 
had in it so little of the European as his, nor one who so well and so 
consistently represented some of the best sides of the American 
character. He proved to be one of the Americans who can calmly 
contemplate a duke, and value him neither the less nor the more on 
account of his dukeship. Swiftly he traveled. Swiftly we pursue 
him. 

At noon on Saturday, the sixteenth of April, 1851, the steamship 
Baltic moved from the wharf at the foot of Oanal-street, with Hor- 
ace Greeley on board as one of her two hundred passengers. It 
was a chilly, dismal day, with a storm brewing and lowering in the 
noj-th-east. The wharf was covered with people, as usual on sailing 
days; and when the huge' vessel was seen to be in motion, and the 
inevitable White Coat was observed among the crowd on her deck, 
a hearty cheer broke from a group of Mr. Greeley's personal 
friends, and was caught up by the rest of the spectators. He 
took off his hat and waved response and farewell, while the 
steamer rolled away like a black cloud, and settled down upon the 
river. 

The passage was exceedingly disagreeable, though not tempest- 
uous. The north-easter that hung over the city when the steamer 
sailed 'clung to her like a brother' all the way over, varying a 
point or two now and then, but not changing to a fair wind for 
more than six hours. Before four o'clock on the first day — before 
the steamer had gone five miles from the Hook, the pangs of sea- 
sickness came over the soul of Horace Greeley, and laid him pros- 
trate. At six o'clock in the evening, a friend, >vho found him in 
the smoker's room, helpless, hopeless, and recumbent, persuaded and 
assisted him to go below, where he had strength only to unboot 



314 THREE MONTHS IN EUROIE. 

and sway into his berth. There he remaiied for twenty-four hours. 
He then managed to crawl upon deck ; but a perpetual head-wind 
and cross-sea were too much for so delicate a system as his, and he 
enjoyed not one hour of health and happiness during the passage. 
His opinion of the sea, therefore, is unfavorable. He thought, that 
a sea-voyage of twelve days was about equal, in the amount of 
misery it inflicts, to two months' hard labor in the State Prison, 
or to the average agony of five years of life on shore. It was a 
consolation to him, however, even when most sick and impatient, 
to think that the gales which were so adverse to the pleasure- 
seekers of the Baltic, were wafting the emigrant ships, which it 
hourly passed, all the more swiftly to the land of opportunity and 
hope. His were ' light afflictions' compared with those of the mul- 
titudes crowded into tJieir stifling steerages. 

At seven o'clock on the evening of Thursday, the twenty-eighth 
of April, under sullen skies and a dripping rain, the passengers of 
the Baltic were taken ashore at Liverpool in a steam-tug, which in 
New York, thought Mr. Greeley, would be deemed unworthy to 
convey market-garbage. With regard to the weather, he tells us, 
in his first letter from England, that he had become reconciled to 
Bullen skies and dripping rains : he wanted to see the thing out, and 
would have taken amiss any deceitful smiles of fortune, now that 
he had learned to dispense with her favors. He advised Ameri- 
cans, on the day of their departure for Europe, to take a long, ear- 
nest gaze at the sun, that they might know him again on their re- 
turn ; for the thing called Sun in England was only shown occasion- 
ally, and bore a nearer resemblance to a boiled turnip than to its 
American namesake. 

Liverpool the traveler scarcely saw, and it impressed him un- 
favorably. The working-class seemed " exceedingly ill-dressed, 
stolid, abject, and hopeless." Extortion and beggary appeared very 
prevalent. In a day or two he was oflP to London by the Trent 
Valley Railroad, which passes through one of the finest agricultural 
districts in England. 

To most men their first ride in a foreign country is a thrilling 
and memorable delight. Whatever Horace Greeley may have felt 
on his journey from Liverpool to London, his remarks upon what 
he s?w are the opposite of rapturous ; yet, as they are character- 



OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION. 315 

Istic, they are interesting. The mind of that man is a ' stud} / who, 
when he has passed through two hundred miles of the enchmting 
rural scenery of England, and sits down to write a letter about it, 
begins by describing the construction of the railroad, continues by 
telling us that much of the land he saw is held at five hundred 
dollars per acre, that two-thirds of it was ' in grass,' that there are 
fewer fruit-trees on the two hundred miles of railroad between 
Liverpool and London, than on the forty miles of the Harlem rail- 
road north of White Plains, that the wooded grounds looked 
meager and scanty, and that the western towns of America ought 
to take warning from this fact and preserve some portions of the 
primeval forest, which, once destroyed, can never be renewed by 
cultivation in their original grandeur. ' The eye sees what it 
brought with it the means of seeing,' and these practical observa- 
tions are infinitely more welcome than aflfected sentiment, or even 
than genuine sentiment inadequately expressed. Besides, the sug- 
gestion with regard to the primeval forests is good and valuable. 
On his arrival in London, Mr. Greeley drove to the house of Mr. 
John Chapman, the well-known publisher, with whom he resided 
during his stay in the metropolis. 

On the first of May the Great Exhibition was opened, and our 
traveler saw the show both within and without the Crystal Palace. 
The day was a fine one — for England. He thought the London sun- 
shine a little superior in brilliancy to American moonlight; and 
wondered how the government could have the conscience to tax 
such light. The royal procession, he says, was not much ; a parade 
of the New York Firemen or Odd Fellows could beat it ; but then 
it Avas a new thing to see a Queen, a court, and an aristocracy doing 
honor to industry. He was glad to see the queen in the pageant, 
though he could not but feel that her vocation was behind the intel- 
ligence of the age, and likely to go out of fashion at no distant day; 
but not through her fault. He could not see, however, what the 
Master of the Buck-hounds, the Groom of the Stole, the Mistress of 
the Robes, and 'such uncouth fossils,' had to do with a grand ex- 
iiibition of the fruits of industry. The Mistress of the Robes made 
no robes ; the Ladies of the Bed-chamber did nothing with beds but 
Bleep on them. The posts of honor nearest the Queen's person ought 
to have been confided to the descendants of Watt and Arkwright, 



• 316 THREE MONTHS IN EU^iOPE. 

'Napfl Icon's real conquerors;' wliile the foreign ambassadors should 
have been the sons of Fitch, Fulton, Whitney, Daguerre and Morse; 
and the places less conspicuous should have been assigned, not to 
Gold-stick, Silver-stick, and 'kindred absurdities,' but to the Queen's 
gardeners, horticulturists, carpenters, upholsterers and milliners ! 
(Fancy Gold-stick reading this passage !) The traveler, however, 
even at such a moment is not unmindful of similar nuisances across 
the ocean, and pauses to express the hope that we may be able, be- 
fore the century is out, to elect ' something else' than Generals to 
the Presidency. 

Before the arrival of Mr. Greeley in London, he bad been named 
by the American Commissioner as a member of the Jury on Hard- 
ware, etc. There Avere so few Americans in London at the time, 
who were not exhibitors, that he did not feel at liberty to decline 
the duties of the proffered post, and accordingly devoted nearly 
every day, from ten o'clock to three, for a month, to an examination 
of the articles upon whose comparative merits the jury were to de- 
cide. Few men would have spent their first month in Europe in 
the discharge of a duty so onerous, so tedious, and so Hkely to be 
thankless. His reward, however, was, that his official position 
opened to him sources of information, gave him facilities for obser- 
vation, and enabled him to form acquaintances, that would not have 
been within the compass of a mere spectator of the Exhibition. 
Among other advantages, it procured him a seat at the banquet 
given at Richmond by the London Commissioners to the Commis- 
sioners from foreign countries, a feast presided over by Lord Ash- 
burton, and attended by an ample representation of the science, 
talent, worth and rank of both hemispheres. It was the particular 
desire of Lord Ashbnrton that the health of Mr. Paxton, the Archi- 
tect of the Palace, should be proposed by an American, and Mr. 
Eiddle, the American Commissioner, designated Horace Greeley for 
that service. The speech delivered by him on that occasion, since 
it is short, appropriate, and characteristic, may properly have a 
place here. Mr. Greeley, being called upon by the Chairman, spoke 
as follows : 

'* In my own land, my lords and gentlemen, where Nature is still so rugged 
and unconquered, where Population is yet so scanty and the demands for hu- 
man exertion are so various and urgent, it is but natural that we should ren« 



HE ATTENDS A GREAT BANQUET. 317 

der marked honor to Labor, and especially to those who by invention or dis- 
covery contribute to sbo rten the processes and increase the efficiency of Indus- 
try. It is but natural, therefore, that this grand conception of a comparison 
of the state of Industry in all Nations, by means of a World's Exhibition, 
should there have been received and canvassed with a lively and general in- 
terest, — an interest which is not measured by the extent of our contributions. 
Ours is still one of the youngest of Nations, with few large accumulations of 
;ho fruits of manufacturing activity or artistic skill, and these 80 generally 
needed for use that we were not likely to send them three thousand miles 
Away, merely for show. It is none the less certain that the progress of this 
great Exhibition, from its original conception to that perfect realization which 
we here commemorate, has been watched and discussed not more earnestly 
throughout the saloons of Europe, than by the smith's forge and the mechanic's 
bench in America. Especially the hopes and fears alternately predominant on 
this side with respect to the edifice required for the Exhibition — the doubts as 
to the practicability of erecting one sufficiently capacious and commodious to 
contain and display the contributions of the whole world — the apprehension 
that it could not be rendered impervious to water — the confident assertions that 
it could not be completed in season for opening the Exhibition on the first of 
May as promised — all found an echo on our shores ; and now the tidings that 
all these doubts have been dispelled, these difficulties removed, will have been 
hailed there with unmingled satisfaction. 

"I trust, gentlemen, that among the ultimate fruits of this Exhibition we 
are to reckon a wider and deeper appreciation of the worth of Labor, and 
especially of those ' Captains of Industry' by whose conceptions and achieve- 
ments our Race is so rapidly borne onward in its progress to a loftier and 
more benignant destiny. We shall not be likely to appreciate less fully the 
merits of the wise Statesmen, by whose measures a People's thrift and hap- 
piness are promoted — of the brave Soldier, who joyfully pours out his blood in 
defense of the rights or in vindication of the honor of his Country — of the 
Sacred Teacher, by whose precepts and example our steps are guided in the 
pathway to heaven — if we render fit honor also to those 'Captains of Industry' 
whose tearless victories redden no river and whose conquering march is un- 
marked by the tears of the widow and the cries of the orphan. I give you, 
therefore, 

" The Health of Joseph Pa.rton, Esq., Designer of the Crystal Palace— 
Honor to him whose genius does honor to Industry and to Man !" 

This speech was not published in the newspaper report of the 
banquet, nor was the name of the speaker even mentioned. The 
omission gave him an opportunity to retort upon the London Times 
its assertion, that with tl)e English press, 'fideUty in reporting is a 
religion.' The speech was w itten out by Mr. Greeley himself, and 



318 ^ THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

published in the Tribune. It must be confessed, that the grad m 
of a Vermont printing-office made a creditable appearance bu^ore 
the 'lords and gentlemen.' 

The sights in and about London seem to have made no great im- 
pression on the n)ind of Horace Greeley. He spent a day at Hamp- 
ton Court, wliich he oddly describes as larger than the Astc. House, 
but less lofty and containing fewer rooms. Westminst'^r Abbey 
appeared to him a mere barbaric profusion of lofty ceilings, stained 
■windows, carving, groining, and all manner of contrivances for 
absorbing labor and money — ' waste, not taste ; the contortions of the 
sybil witliout her inspiration.' The part of the building devoted to 
public worship he thought less adapted to that purpose than a fifty- 
thousand dollar church in New York. The new fashion of 'inton- 
ing ' the service sounded to his ear, as though a Friar Tuck had 
wormed himself into the desk and was trying, under pretense of 
reading the service, to caricature, as broadly as possible, the alleged 
peculiarity of the methodistic pulpit super-imposed upon the regular 
Yankee drawl. The Epsom races lie declined to attend for three 
reasons; he had much to do at home, he did not care a button 
which of tliirty colts could run fastest, and he preferred that his 
delight and that of swindlers, robbers, and gamblers, should not 
* exactly coincide.' He found time, however, to visit the Model 
Lodging houses, the People's Bathing establishments, and a Ragged 
School. The spectacle of want and woe presented at the Ragged 
School touched him nearly. It made him feel, to quote his own 
language, that "he had hitherto said too little, done too little, dared 
too little, sacrified too little, to awaken attention to the infernal 
wrongs and abuses, which are inherent in the very structure and 
constitution, the nature and essence of civilized society, as it now 
exists throughout Christendom." He was in haste to be gone from 
a scene, to look upon which, as a mere visitor, seemed an insult 
heaped on injury, an unjustifiable prying into the saddest secrets of 
the prison-house of human woe ; but he apologized for the fancied 
impertinence by a gift of money. 

While in London, Mr. Greeley attended the anniversary of the 
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and made a speech cf a 
somewhat nov^l and unexpected nature. The question that was 
under discussion was, 'What can we Britons do to hasten the over- 



HE SPEAKS AT EXETER HALL. 319 

throw of Slavery V Three colored goutlemen and an M. P. had 
extolled Britain as the land of t)'ue freedom and equality, had 
urged Britons to refuse recognition to ' pro-slavery clergymen,' to 
avoid using the products of slave-labor, and to assist the free-colored 
people to educate their children. One of the colored orators had 
observed the entrance of Horace Greeley, and named him commend- 
ingly to the audience ; whereupon he was invited to take a seat 
upon the platform, and afterwards to address the meeting; both of 
which invitations were promptly accepted. He spoke fifteen min- 
utes. He began by stating the fact, that American Slavery justifies 
itself mainly on the ground, that the class who live by manual toil 
are everywhere, but particularly in England^ degraded and ill-re- 
quited. Therefore, he urged upon English Abolitionists, first, to use 
systematic exertions to increase the reward of Labor and the com- 
fort and consideration of the depressed Laboring Class at home; 
and to diffuse and cherish respect for Man as Man, without regard 
to class, color or vocation. Secondly, to put forth determined ef- 
forts for the eradication of those Social evils and miseries in Eng- 
land wliich are appealed to and relied on by slaveholders and their 
champions everywhere as justifying the continuance of Slavery ; 
and thirdly, to colonize our Slave States by thousands of intelligent, 
moral, industrious Free Laborers, who will silently and practically 
dispel the wide-spread delusion whicJi affirms that the Southern 
States must be cultivated and their great staples produced by Slave 
Labor, or not at all. 

These suggestions were listened to with respectful attention ; but 
they did not elicit the 'thunder of applause' which had greeted the 
'Stand-aside-for-I-am-holier-than-thou' oratory of the preceding 
speakers. 

Our traveler witnessed the second performance at the Devonshire 
House, of Buhver's play, 'Not so Bad as we Seem,' for the benefit 
of the Literary Guild, the characters by Charles Dickens, Douglas 
Jerrold, and other literary notabilities. !N"ot that he hoped much 
for the success of the project; but it was, at least, an attempt to 
mend the fortunes of unlucky British authors, whose works ' we 
Americans habitually steal,' and to whom he, as an individual, felt 
himself indebted. The price of the tickets for the first performance 
was twenty -five <i ollars. He applied for one too late, and .vas there- 



320 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

fore ol iged to content himself with purchasing a ten-dollar ticket 
for the second. The play, however, he found rather dull than 
otherwise, the performance being indebted, he thought, for its main 
interest to the personal character of the actors, who played respect- 
ably for amateurs, but not well. Dickens was not at home in the 
leading part, as ' stateliness sits ill upon hira ;' but he shone in the 
scene where, as a bookseller in disguise, he tempts the virtue of a 
pocr author. Tn the afterpiece, however, in which the novelist 
personated in rapid succession a lawyer, a servant, a gentleman and 
an invalid, the acting seemed ' perfect,' and the play was heartily 
enjoyed throughout. Mr. Greeley thought, that the'" raw material 
of a capital comedian was put to a better use when Charles Dickens 
took to authorship." It was half-past twelve when the curtain fell, 
and the audience repaired to a supper room, where the munificence 
of the Duke of Devonshire had provided a superb and profuse enter- 
tainment. " I did not venture, at that hour," says the traveler, " to 
partake ; but those who did would be quite unlikely to repent of it 
— till morning." He left the ducal mansion at one, just as ' the vio- 
lins began to give note of coming melody, to which nimble feet 
were eager to respond.' 

The eightieth birthday of Eobert Owen was celebrated on the 
fourteenth of May, by a dinner at the Colbourne hotel, attended by 
a few of Mr. Owen's personal friends, among whom Horace Gree- 
ley was one. " I cannot," wrote Mr. Greeley, " see many things as 
he does ; it seems to me that he is stone-blind on the side of Faith 
in the invisible, and exaggerates the truths he perceives until they 
almost become falsehoods; but I love his sunny, benevolent nature, 
I admire his unwearied exertions for what he deems the good of 
humanity ; and, believing with the great apostle to the Gentiles, 
that ' Now abide faith, hope, charity ; these three ; but the great- 
est of these is charity,' I consider him practically a better Chris- 
tian than half those who, professing to be such, believe more and do 
less." The only other banquet at which Mr. Greeley was a guest in 
London during his first visit, was the dinner of the Fish monger's 
Company. There he heard a harangue from from Sir James 
Brooke, the Rajah of Borneo. From reading, he had formed the 
opinion that the Rajah was doing a good work for civilization 
aud humanity in B )rneo, but this impression was not confirmed 



BEVORE A COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 321 

by the ornate and fluent speech delivered by him on this occa- 
sion. 

During Mr. Greeley's stay in London, the repeal of the ' taxes on 
knowledge ' was agitated in and out of parliament. Those taxes 
were a duty on advertisements, and a stamp-duty of one penny per 
copy on >-3rv periodical containing news. A parliamentary com- 
mittee, consisting of eight members of the House of Commons, the 
Rt. Hon. T. Milnor Gibson, Messrs. Tufnell, Ewart, Cobden, Rich, 
Adair, Hamilton, and Sir J. Walmsey, had the subject under con- 
sideration, and Mr. Greeley, as the representative of the only un- 
\rammeled press in the world, was invited to give the committee 
the benefit of his experience. Mr. Greeley's evidence, given in 
two sessions of the committee, no doubt had influence upon the 
subsequent action of parliament. The advertisement duty was en- 
tirely removed. The penny stamp was retained for revenue rea- 
sons only, but must finally yield to the demands of the nation. 

The chief part of Mr. Greeley's evidence claims a place in this 
work, both because of its interesting character, and because it 
really influenced legislation on a subject of singular importance. 
He told England what England did not understand before he told 
her — why the Times newspaper was devouring its contemporaries ; 
and he assisted in preparing the way for that coming penny-press 
which is destined to play so great a part in the future of ' Great 
England.' 

In reply to a question by the chairman of the committee with re- 
gard to the effect of the duty upon the advertising business, Mr. 
Greeley replied substantially as follows : 

" Your duty is the same on the advertise^nents in a journal with fifty 
thousand circulation, as in a journal with one thousand, although the value 
of the article is twenty times as much in the one case as in the other. The 
duty operates precisely as though you were to lay a tax of one shilling a day 
on every day's labor that a man were to do ; to a man whose labor is worth 
two shillings a day, it would be destructive ; while by a man who earns twen- 
ty shillings a day, it would be very lightly felt. An advertisement is worth 
but a certain amount, and the public soon get to know what it is worth ; you 
put a duty on advertisements and you destroy the value of those coming to 
Qew establishments. People who advertise in your well-established journals, 
•ouid afford to rav a price to include the duty ; but in a new paper, tlie adver 
21 



322 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

tisements would not be worth the amount of the duty alone; and consequent- 
ly the new concern would have no chance Now, the advertisements are one 
main source of the income of daily papers, and thousands of business men 
take them mainly for those advertisements. For instance, at the time when 
our auctioneers were appointed bylaw (they were, of course, party oliticians), 
one journal, which was high in the confidence of ;he party in power, obtained 
not a law, but an understanding, that all the auctioneers appointed should ad- 
vertise in that journal. Now, though the journal referred to has ceased to 
be of that party, and the auctioneers are no longer appointed by the State, 
yet that journal has almost the mcnopoly of the auctioneers' business to this 
day. Auctioneers must advertise in it because they know that purchasers are 
looking there ; and purchasers must take the paper, because they know that it 
contains just the advertisements they want to see; and this, without regard to 
the goodness or the principles of the paper. I know men in this town who 
take one journal mainly for its advertisements, and they must take the Times, 
because everything is advertised in it ; for the same reason, advertisers must 
advertise in the Times. If we had a duty on advertisements, I will not say 
it would be impossible to build a new concern up in New York against the 
competition of the older ones ; but I do say, it would be impossible to preserve 
the weaker papers from being swallowed up by the stronger." 

Mr. CoBDEN. "Do you then consider the fact, that the Times newspaper 
for the last fifteen years has been increasing so largely in circulation, is to be 
accounted for mainly by the existence of the advertisement duty 7" 

Mr. Greeley. "Yes; much more than the stamp. By the operation of the 
advertisement duty, an advertisement is charged ten times as much in one 
paper as in another. An advertisement in the Times may be worth five 
pounds, while in another paper it is only worth one pound ; but the duty is 
the same." 

Mr. Rich. "The greater the number of small advertisements in papers, 
the greater the advantage to their proprietors 7" 

Mr. Greeley. " Yes. Suppose the cost of a small advertisement to be five 
shillings, the usual charge in the Times ; if you have to pay a shilling or 
eighteen pence duty, that advertisement is worth nothing in a journal with a 
fourth part of the circulation of the Times " 

Chairman. " Does it not appear to you that the taxes on the press are 
hostile to one another ; in the first place, lessening the circulation of .papers 
by means of the stamp duty, we diminish the consumption of paper, and 
therefore lessen the amount of paper duty ; secondly, by diminishing the sale 
of papers through the stamp, we lessen the number of advertisements, and 
therefore the receipts of the advertisement duty 7" 

Mr. Greeley. " I should say that if the government were, simply as a mat- 
ter of revenue, to fix a duty, say of half a penny per pound, on paper, it would 
be easily collected, and prtduce more money ; tud then, a law which is equal 



HE THROWS LIGHT UPON THE SUBJECT. 323 

In its operation does not require any considerable number of officers to collect 
the duty, and it would require no particular vigilance ; and the duty on paper 
alone would be most equal and most efficient as a revenue duty." 

Chairman. " It is clear, then, that the effect of the stamp and advertise- 
ment duty is to lessen the amount of the receipt from the duty on paper.'- 

Mr. Greeley. "Enormously. I see that the circulation of daily papers in 
London is but sixty thousand, against a hundred thousand in New York ; 
while the tendency is more to concentrate on London than on New York. Not 
a tenth part of our daily papers are printed in New York." 

Mr. CoBDEN. " Do you consider, that there are upwards of a million papers 
issued daily from the press in the United States 7" 

Mr. Greeley. " I should say about a million : I cannot say upwards. I 
think there are about two hundred and fifty daily journals published in tho 
United States." 

Mr. CoBDEN. "At what amount of population does a town in the United 
States begin to have a daily paper 1 They first of all begin with a weekly 
paper, do they not 7" 

Mr. Greeley. " Yes. The general rule is, that each county will have one 
weekly newspaper. In all the Free States, if a county have a population of 
twenty thousand, it has two papers, one for each party. The general average 
in the agricultural counties is one local journal to every ten thousand inhab- 
itants. When a town grows to have fifteen thousand inhabitants in and about 
it, then it has a daily paper ; but sometimes that is the case when it has as few 
as ten thousand : it depends more, on the business of a place than its popula- 
tion. But fifteen thousand may be stated as the average at which a daily pa- 
per commences ; at twenty thousand they have two, and so on. In central 
towns, like Buffalo, Rochester, Troy, they have from three to five daily jour- 
nals, each of which prints a semi-weekly or a weekly journal." 

Mr. Rich. " Have your papers much circulation outside the towns in which 
they are published V 

Mr. Greeley. " The county is the genera! limit ; though some have a 
judicial district of five or six counties." 

Mr. Rich. " Would the New York paper, for instance, have much circula- 
tion in Charleston ?" 

Mr. Greeley. " The New York Herald, I think, which is considered the 
journal most friendly to Southern interests, has a considerable circula- 
tion there." 

Chairman. "When a person proposes to publish a paper in New York, he 
is not required to go to any office to register himself, or to give security that 
he will not insert libels or seditious matter 7 A newspaper publisher is not 
subject to any liability more than other persoas 7" 

Mr. Greeley. " No ; no more than a man that starts a blacksmith'a 
ihop." 



324 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

Chairman. 'They do not presume in the United States, that because a 
man is going to print news in a paper, he is going to libel?" 

Mr. Greeley. "No; nor do they presume that his libeling would be 
worth much, unless he is a responsible character." 

Mr. CoBDEN. "From what you have stated with regard to the circulation 
of the daily papers in New York, it appears that a very large proportion of the 
adult population must be customers for them '?" 

Mr. Greeley. " Yes ; I think three-fourths of all the families take a daily 
paper of some kind." 

Mr. CoBDEN. " The purchasers of the daily papers must consist of a difiFer- 
ent class from those in England ; mechanics must purchase theml" 

Mr. Greeley. '* Every mechanic takes a paper, or nearly every one." 

Mr. CoBDEN. " Do those people generally get them before they leave home 
for their work 7" 

Mr. Greeley. " Yes ; and you are complained of if you do not furnish a 
man with his newspaper at his breakfast ; he wants to read it between six or 
seven usually." 

Mr. CoBDEN. " Then a ship-builder, or a cooper, or a joiner, needs his daily 
paper at his breakfast- time?" 

Mr. Greeley. " Yes ; and he may take it with him to read at his dinner 
between twelve and one ; but the rule is, that he wants his paper at his break- 
fast" 

Mr. CoBDEN. " After he has finished his breakfast or his dinner, he may 
be found reading the daily newspaper, just as the people of the upper classes 
do in England?" 

Mr. Greeley. " Yes ; if they do." 

Mr. CoBDEN. " And that is quite common, is it not?" 

Mr. Greeley. " Almost universal, I think. There is a very low class, a 
good many foreigners, who do not know how to read ; but no native, I think." 

Mr. Ewart. " Do the agricultural laborers read much ?" 

Mr. Greeley. " Yes ; they take our weekly papers, which they receive 
through the post generally." 

Mr, CoBDEN. "The working people in New York are not in the habit of 
resorting to public-houses to read the newspapers, are they ?" 

Mr. Greeley. " They go to public-houses, but not to read the papers. It 
is not the general practice ; but, still, we have quite a class who do so." 

Mr. CoBDEN. " The newspapers, then, is not the attraction to the public- 
house ?" 

Mr. Greeley. "No. I think a very small proportion of our reading class 
go there at all ; those that I have seen there are mainly the foreign popula 
tion, those who do not read." 

Chairman. " Are there any papers published in New York, or in other 
parts, which may be said to be of an obscene or immoral character ?" 



VINDICATES THE AMERICAN PRE»S. 325 

Mr. Greeley. " We call the New York Herald a very bad paper — thoso 
who do not like it ; but that is not the cheapest." 

Chairman. " Have you heard of a paper called the ' The Town,' publish- 
ed in this country, with pictures of a certain character in it? Have you any 
publications in the United States of that character'?" 

Mr. Greeley. " Not daily papers. There are weekly papers got up from 
time to time called the ' Scorpion,' the ' Flash,' and so on, whofe purpose is to 
extort money from parties who can be threatened with exposure of immora 
practices, or for visiting infamous houses." 

Mr. EwART. " They do not last, do they 7" 

Mr Greeley. " I do not know of any one being continued for any con- 
siderable time. If one dies, another is got up, and that goes down. Our 
cheap daily papers, the very cheapest, are, as a class, quite as discreet in their 
conduct and conversation as other journals. They do not embody the same 
amount of talent ; they devote themselves mainly to news. They are not 
party journals ; they are nominally independent ; they are not given to harsh 
language with regard to public men : they are very moderate. 

Mr, EwART. " Is Bcurility or personality common in the publications of 
the United States'?" 

Mr. Greeley. *' It is not common ; it is much less frequent than it was ; 
but it is not absolutely unknown." 

Mr. CoBDEK. " What is the circulation of the New York Herald'?" 

Mr. Greeley. " Twenty- five thousand, I believe." 

Mr. CoBDEN. " Is that an influential paper in America 1" 

Mr. Greeley. " I think not." 

Mr. CoBDEN. " It has a higher reputation in Europe probably than at home.*' 

Mr. Greeley. " A certain class of journals in this country find it their in 
terest or pleasure to quote it a good deal." 

Chairman. " As the demand is extensive, is tho remuneration for the ser- 
vices of the literary men who are employed on the press, good 7" 

Mr. Greeley. " Tho prices of literary labor are more moderate than in this 
country. The highest salary, I think, that would be commanded by any one 
connected with the press would be five thousand dollars — the highest that 
could be thought of. I have not heard of higher than three thousand." 

Mr. Rich. " What would be about the ordinary remuneration?" 

Mr. Greeley. " In our own concern it is, besides the principal editor, from 
fifteen hundred dollars down to five hundred. I think that is the usual range." 

Chairman. " Are your leading men in America, in point of literary abil- 
ity, employed from time to time upon the press as an occupation V 

Mr. Greeley. " It is beginning to be so, but it has not been the custom 
There have been leading men connected with the press ; but the press has not 
been usually conducted by the most powerful men. With a few exceptions, 
the leading political journals are conducted ably, and they are becoming more 



326 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

BO ; and, with a wider diflfusion of the circulatiou, the press is more able to {ay 
for it." 

Mr. Rich. *' Is it a profession apart V 

Mr. Greeley. " No ; usually the men have been brought up to the bar, to 
the pulpit, and so on ; they are literary men." 

Chairman. " I presume that the non-reading class in the United States ia 
a very limited one 7" 

Mr. Greeley. " Yes ; except in the Slave States." 

Chairman. " Do not you consider that newspaper reading is calculated to 
keep up a habit of reading?" 

Mr. Greeley. " I think it is worth all the schools in the country. I think 
it creates a taste for reading in every child's mind, and it increases his inter- 
est in his lessons ; he is attracted from always seeing a newspaper and hear- 
ing it read. I think." 

Chairman. " Supposing that you had your schools as now, but that your 
newspaper press were reduced within the limits of the press in England, do 
you not think that the habit of reading acquired at school would be frequently 
laid aside ?" 

Mr. Greeley. *' I think that the habit would not be acquired, and that 
paper reading would fall into disuse." 

Mr. EwART. " Having observed both countries, can you state whether the 
press has greater influence on public opinion in the United States than in Eng- 
land, or th« reverse 7" 

Mr. Greeley. " I think it has more influence with us. I do not know that 
any class is despotically governed by the press, but its influence is more uni- 
versal ; every one reads and talks about it with us, and more weight is laid 
upon intelligence than on editorials; the paper which brings the quickest news 
is the thing looked to." 

Mr. EwAHT. " The leading article has not so much influence as in England ?" 

Mr. Greeley. '• No; the telegraphic dispatch is the great point." 

Mr. CoBDEN. " Observing our newspapers and comparing them with the 
American papers, do you find that we make much less use of the electric tele- 
graph for transmitting news than in America?'' 

Mr. Greeley. " Not a hundredth part as much as we do." 

Mr. CoBDEN. " An impression prevails in this country that our newspaper 
press incurs a great deal more expense to expedite new3 than you do in New 
York. Are you of that opinion 7" 

Mr. Greeley. *' I do not know what your expense is. I should say that a 
hundred thousand dollars a year is paid by our association of the six leading 
daily papers, besides what each gets separately for itself." 

Mr. CoBDEN. " Twenty thousand pounds a year is paid by your associ- 
ation, consisting of six papers, for what you get in common?" 

Mr. Greeley. *' Yes ; we telegraph a great deal in the United States. A» 



THE SIGHTS OF PARIS. 327 

Burning that a scientific meeting was held at Cincinnati this ycAr, we should 
telegraph the reports from that place, and I presume other journals would 
have special reporters to report the proceedings at length. We have a report 
every day, fifteen hundred miles, from New Orleans daily ; from St. Louis 
too, and other places." 

" The Committee then adjourned." 

Ou Saturday morning, the seventh of June, after a residence of 
seven busy weeks in London, our traveler left that ' magnificent 
Babel,' for Paris, selecting the dearest and, of course, the quickest 
route. Dover, quaint and curious Dover, he thought a 'mean old 
town;' and the steamboat which conveyed him from Dover to 
Calais was ' one of those long, black, narrow scow-cofttrivancea, 
about equal to a buttonwood dug-out, which England appears to 
delight in.' Two hours of deadly sea-sickness, and he stood on the 
shores of France. At Calais, which he styles ' a queer old town,' 
he was detained a long hour, obtained an execrable dinner for 
thirty-seven and a half cents, and changed some sovereigns for 
French money, 'at a shave which was not atrocious.' Then away 
to Paris by the swiftest train, arriving at half-past two on Sunday 
morning, four hours after the time promised in the enticing adver- 
tisement of the route. The ordeal of the custom-house he passed 
with little delay. " I did not," he says, " at first comprehend, that 
the number on my trunk, standing out fair before me in hon- 
est, unequivocal Arabic figures, could possibly mean anything but 
'fifty-two;' but a friend cautioned me in season that those figures 
spelled 'cinquante-deux,' or phonetically 'sank-on-du' to the oflicer, 
and I made my first attempt at mouthing French accordingly, and 
succeeded in making myself intelligible." 

About daylight on Sunday morning, he reached the Hotel Choi- 
seul. Rue St. Honoro, where he found shelter, but not bed. After 
breakfast, however, he sallied forth and saw his first sight in Paris, 
high mass at the Church of the Madeleine ; which he thought a 
gorgeous, but 'inexplicable dumb show.' 

Eight days were all that the indefatigable man could afford to a 
stay in the gay capital ; but he improved the time. The obelisk of 
Luxor, brought from the banks of the Nile, and covered with mys- 
terious inscriptions, that had braved the winds and rains of four 
thousand years, impressed him more deeply than any object he had 



328 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

seen in Europe. Tlie Tuileries were to his eye only an irregular 
mass of buildings with little architectural beauty, and remarkable 
chiefly for their magnitude. At the French Opera, he saw the 
musical spectacle of Azael the Prodigal, or rather, three acts of it; 
for liis patience gave way at the end of the third act. " Such a 
medley of drinking, praying, dancing, idol-worship, and Delilah- 
craft he had never before encountered." To comprehend an Eng- 
lishman, he says, follow him to the fireside ; a Frenchman, join him 
at the opera, and contemplate hira during the performance of the bal- 
let, of which France is the cradle and the home. " Though no prac- 
titioner^'''' he adds, " I am yet a lover of the dance;" but the attitudes 
and contortions of the ballet are disagreeable and tasteless, and 
the tendency of such a performance as he that night beheld, was 
earthy, sensual, devilish. Notre Dame he thought not only the 
finest church, but the most imposing edifice in Paris, infinitely supe- 
rior, as a place of worship, to the damp, gloomy, dungeon-like 
Westminster Abbey. The Hotel de Ville, like the New York City 
Hall, ' lacks another story.' In the Palace of Versailles, he saw fresh 
proofs of the selfishness of king-craft, the long-suffering patience 
of nations, and the necessary servility of Art when patronized by 
royalty. He wandered for hours through its innumerable halls, 
encrusted with splendor, till the intervention of a naked ante-room 
was a relief to the eye ; and the ruling idea in picture and statue 
and carving was military glory. " Carriages shattered and overturn- 
ed, animals transfixed by spetir- thrusts and writhing in speechless 
agony, men riddled by cannon-shot or pierced by musket-balls, and 
ghastly with coming death ; such are the spectacles which the 
more favored and fortunate of the Gallic youth have been called 
for generations to admire and enjoy. The whole collection is, in 
its general effect, delusive and mischievous, the purpose being to 
exhibit War as always glorious, and France as uniformly triumph- 
ant. It is by means like these that the business of shattering knee- 
joints and multiplying orphans is kept in countenance." 

At the Louvre, however, the traveler spent the greater part of 
two days in rapturous contemplation of its wonderful collection of 
paintings. Two days out of eight -the fact is significant. 

Let no man who has spent but three days in a foreign country, 
venture on prophecy with regard to its future. France, at the time 



HIS OPINION OF THE FRENCH. 329 

of Horace Greeley's brief visit, went by the name of Republic, and 
Louis Napoleon was called President. For a sturdy republican 
like Mr. Greeley, it was but natural that one of his first inquiriea 
should be, ' Will the Republic stand V It is amusing, now^ to read 
in a letter of his, written on the third day of his residence in Paris, 
the most confident predictions of its stability. " Alike," he says, 
"by its own strength and by its enemies' divisions, the safety of the 
Republic is assured ;" and again, " Time is on the popular side, and 
every hour's endurance adds strength to the Republic." And yet 
again, ''An open attack by the Autocrat would certainly consolidate 
it ; a prolongation of Louis Napoleon's power (no longer prolaUe) 
would have the same effect." "No longer probable." The striking 
events of history have seldom seemed ""probable' a year before they 
occurred. 

Other impressions made upon the mind of the traveler were 
more correct. France, which the English press was daily repre- 
senting as a nation inhabited equally by felons, bankrupts, paupers 
and lunatics, he found as tranquil and prosperous as England her- 
self. He saw there less plate upon the sideboards of her landlords 
and bankers, but he observed evidences on all hands of general 
though unostentatious thrift. The French he thought intelligent, 
vivacious, courteous, obliging, generous and humane, eager to en- 
joy, but willing that all the world should enjoy with them ; but at 
the same time, they are impulsive, fickle, sensual and irreverent. 
Paris, the ' paradise of the senses,' contained tens of thousands who 
could die fighting for liberty, but no class who could even compre- 
hend the idea of the temperance pledge ! ! The poor of Paris 
seemed to suffer less than the poor of London ; but in London there 
were ten philanthropic enterprises for one in Paris. In Paris he 
saw none of that abject servility in the bearing of the poor to the 
rich which had excited his disgust and commiseration in London. 
A hundred princes and dukes attract less attention in Paris than 
one in London ; for ' Democracy triumphed in the drawing-rooms 
of Paris before it had erected its first barricade in the streets ;' and 
once more the traveler " marvels at the obliquity of vision^ where- 
by any one is enabled, standing in this metropolis, to anticipate the 
subversion of the Republic." " And if," he adds, "passing over 
the mob of generals and politioians-by -trade, the choice of candi- 



330 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

dates for the next presidential term should fall on some modest and 
unambitious citizen, who has earned a character by quiet probity 
and his bread by honest labor, I shall hope to see his name at the 
head of the poll in spite of the unconstitutional overthrow of Uni 
versal Suffrage/' Thus he thought that France, fickle, glory-lovir^ 
France, would do in 1852, what he only hoped America would be 
capable of some time before the year 1900 ; that is, ' elect something 
else than Generals to the presidency.' 

Away to Lyons on the sixteenth of June. To an impetuous trav- 
eler like Horace Greeley, the tedious formalities of the European 
railroads were sufficiently irritating ; but the " passport nuisance " 
was disgusting almost beyond endurance. One of the very few 
anecdotes which he found time to tell in his letters to the Tribune, 
occurs in connection with his remarks upon this subject. "Every 
one in Paris who lodges a stranger must see forthwith that he has 
a passport in good condition, in default of which said host is liable 
to a penalty. Now, two Americans, when applied to, produced 
passports in due form, but the professions set forth therein were not 
transparent to the landlord's apprehension. One of them was duly 
designated in his passport as a ' loafer^ the other as a ' rowdy ^ and 
they informed him, on application, that though these professions 
were highly popular in America and extensively followed, they 
knew no French synonyms into which they could be translated. The 
landlord, not content with the sign manual of Daniel Webster, affirm- 
ing that all was right, applied to an American friend for a translation 
01 the inexplicable professions, but I am not sure that he has even 
yet been fully enlightened with regard to them." He thought that 
three days' endurance of the passport system as it exists on the con- 
tinent of Europe would send any American citizen home with his 
love of liberty and country kindled to a blaze of enthusiasm. 

On the long railroad ride to Lyons, the traveler was half stifled 
with the tobacco smoke in the cars. His companions were all 
Frenchmen and all smokers, who "kept puff- puffing, through the 
day; first all of them, then three, two, and at all events one, till 
they all got out at Dijon near nightfall; when, before I had time 
to congratulate myself on the atmospheric improvement, another 
Frenchman got in, lit his cigar, and went at it. All this was in 
direct and flagrant violation of the rules posted up in the car ; 



JOURNEY TO ITALY. 



331 



but when did a smoker 3ver care for law or decency ?" However 
he flattened his nose diligently against the car windows, and spied 
what he could of the crops, the culture, the houses and the pec pie 
of the country. He discovered that a Yankee could mow twice 
as much grass in a day as a Frenchman, but not get as much from 
each acre ; that the women did more than half the work ( f the 
farms ; that the agricultural implements were primitive and rude, 
the hay-carts " wretchedly small ;" that the farm-houses were low 
small, steep-roofed, huddled together, and not worth a hundred dol- 
lars each ; that fruit-trees were deplorably scarce ; and that the 
stalls and stables for the cattle were ' visible only to the eye of 
faith.' He reached Chalons on the Saone, at nine in the evening ; 
and Lyons per steamboat in the afternoon of the next day. Lyons, 
the capital of the silk-trade, furnished him, as might have been an- 
ticipated, with an excellent text for a letter on Protection, in which 
he endeavored to prove that it is not best for mankind that one 
hundred thousand silk-workers should be clustered on any square 
mile or two of earth. 

The traveler's next ride was across the Alps to Turin. The let- 
ter which describes it contains, besides the usual remarks upon 
wheat, grass, fruit-trees and bad fiirming, one slight addition to our 
stock of personal anecdotes. The diligence had stopped at Cham- 
bery, the capital of Savoy, for breakfast. 

" There was enough," he writes, " and good enough to eat, wine in abun- 
dance without charge, but tea, coffee, or chocolate, must be ordered and paid 
for extra. Yet I was unable to obtain a cup of chocolate, the excuse being 
that there was not time to make it. I did not understand, therefore, why I 
was charged more than others for breakfast ; but to talk English against 
French or Italian is to get a mile behind in no time, so I pocketed the change 
offered me and came away. On the coach, however, with an Englishman near 
me who had traveled this way before and spoke French and Italian, 1 ven- 
tured to expose my ignorance as follows : 

" ' Neighbor, why was I charged three francs for breakfast, and the rest of 
you but two and a half V 

•* ' Don't know — perhaps you had tea or coffee.' 

" ' No, sir — don't drink either.' 

" • Then perhaps you washed your face and hands.' 

" ' Well, it would be just like me.' 

" ' 0, then, that 's it ! The half franc was for the basin and towel.* 

" * Ah oui, oui.' So the milk in that cocoanut was accounted for." 



332 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

Anecdotes are precious for biographical purposes. This is a 
little story, but the reader may infer from it something respecting 
Horace Greeley's manners, habits, and character. The morn- 
ing of June the twentieth found the diligence rumbling over 
the beautiful plain of Piedmont towards Turin. Horace Greeley 
was in Italy. One of tlie first observations which he made in that 
encliantmg country was, that he had never seen a region where a 
few sub-soil plow s^ with men qualified to use and explain them, were 
80 much wanted ! Refreshing remark I The sky of Italy had been 
overdone. At length, a traveler crossed the Alps who had an eye 
for the necessities of the soil. 

Mr. Greeley spent twenty-one days in Italy, paying flying visits 
to Turin, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Padua, Bologna, Venice, Milan, and 
passing about a week in Rome. At Genoa, he remarked that the 
kingdom of Sardinia, which contains a population of only four mill- 
ions, maintains sixty thousand priests, but not five thousand teach- 
ers of elementary knowledge ; and that, while the churches of Ge- 
noa are worth four millions of dollars, the school-houses would not 
bring fifty thousand. " The black-coated gentry fairly overshadow 
the land with their shovel-hats, so that corn has no ohance of sun- 
shine." Pisa, too, could afibrd to spend a hundred thousand dol- 
lars in fireworks to celebrate the anniversary of its patron saint ; 
but can spare nothing for popular education. At Florence, the trav- 
veler passed some agreeable hours with Hiram Powers, felt that his 
Greek Slave and Fisher Boy were not the loftiest achievements of 
that artist, defied antiquity to surpass his Proserpine and Psyche, 
and predicted that Powers, unlike Alexander, has realms still to 
conquer, and will fulfill his destiny. At Bologna the most notable 
thing he saw was an awning spread over the center of the main 
street for a distance of half a mile, and he thought the idea might 
be worth borrowing. On entering Venice his carpet-bags were 
searched for tobacco ; and he remarks, that when any tide-waiter 
finds more of that noxious weed about him than the chronic ill- 
breeding of smokers compels him to carry in his clothes, he is wel- 
come to confiscate all his worldly possessions. Before reaching 
Venice, another diligence-incident occurred, which the traveler may 
be permitted himself to relate 



A NAP IN THE DILIGENCE. 333 

"As inidniglit drew on," he writes, " I grew weary of gazing at the same 
endless diversity of grain-field*, vineyards, rows of trees, Ac, though the 
bright moon was now shining ; and, shutting out the chill night-aii, I disposed 
myself on my old great-coat and softest carpet-bag for a drowse, having ample 
_room at my command if I could but have brought it into a straight line. But 
the road was hard, the coach a little the uneasiest I ever hardened my bones 
upon, and my slumber was of a disturbed and dubious character, a dim sense 
of physical discomfort shaping and coloring my incoherent and fitful visions. 
For a time I fancied myself held down on my back while some malevolent 
wretch drenched the floor (and me) with filthy water ; then I was in a rude 
scuffle, and came out third or fourth best, with my clothes badly torn ; anon I 
had lost my hat in a strange place, and could not begin to find it ; and at last 
my clothes were full of grasshoppers and spiders, who were beguiling their 
leisure by biting and stinging me. The misery at last became unbearable and 
I awoke. But where 7 I was plainly in a tight, dark box that needed more 
air ; I soon recollected that it was a stage-coach, wherein I had been making 
my way from Ferrara to Padua. I threw open the door and looked out. 
Horses, postilions, and guard were all gone ; the moon, the fields, the road 
were gone : I was in a close court-yard, alone with Night and Silence ; but 
where 1 A church clock struck three ; but it was only promised that we 
should reach Padua by four, and I, making the usual discount on such prom- 
ises, had set down five as the probable hour of our arrival. I got out to take 
a more deliberate survey, and the tall form and bright bayonet of an Austrian 
sentinel, standing guard over the egress of the court-yard, were before me. 
To talk German was beyond the sweep of my dizziest ambition, but an Italian 
runner or porter instantly presented himself. From him I made out that I 
was in Padua of ancient and learned renown (Italian Padova), and that the 
first train for Venice would not start for three hours yet. I followed him into 
a convenient cafe, which was all open and well lighted, where I ordered a cup 
of chocolate, and proceeded leisurely to discuss it. When I had finished, the 
other guests had all gone out, but daylight was coming in, and I began to feel 
more at home. The cafe tender was asleep in his chair ; the porter had gone 
off; the sentinel alone kept awake on his post. Soon the welcome face of the 
coach-guard, whom I had borne company from Bologna, appeared ; I hailed 
him, obtained my baggage, hired a porter, and, having nothing more to wait 
for, started at a little past four for the Railroad station, nearly a mile dis- 
tant ; taking observations as I went. Arrived at the depot, I discharged my 
porter, sat down and waited for the place to open, with ample leisure for re- 
flection. At six o'clock I felt once more the welcome motion of a railroad car, 
and at eight was in Venice." 

At Venice, amid a thousand signs of decay, he saw one, and only 
OPe, indication of i)rogress. It was a gondola with the word Cm- 



334 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

VTBus written upon it ; and tlie omnibus, he remarks, typifies Asso- 
ciation, the simple but grandly fruitful idea which is destined to 
renovate the world of industry and production, substituting abun- 
dance and comfort for penury and misery. For Man, he thought, 
this quickening word is yet seasonable ; for Venice, it is too late. 

Rome our hurrying traveler reached through much tribulation 
Even Ms patience gave way when the petty and numberless ex- 
actions of passport officials, hotel runners, postihons, and porters, 
had wrung the last copper from his pocket. After he and his fel- 
low-passengers had paid every conceivable demand, when they 
supposed they had bought off every enemy, and had nothifig to do 
but drive quietly into the city, "our postilion," says the indignant 
traveler, " came down upon us for more money for taking us to a 
hotel ; and as we could do no better, we agreed to give him four 
francs to set down four of us (all the Americans and English he 
had) at one hotel. He drove by the Diligence Office, however, and 
there three or four rough customers jumped unbidden on the ve- 
hicle, and, when we reached our hotel, made themselves busy with 
our little luggage, which we would have thanked them to let alone. 
Having obtained it, we settled with the postilion, who grumbled 
and scolded, though we paid him more than his four francs. Then 
came the leader of our volunteer aids, to be paid for taking down 
the luggage. I had not a penny of change left, but others of our 
company scraped their pockets of a handfuf of coppers, which the 
''faccliini' rejected with scorn, throwing them after us up stairs (I 
hope they did not pick them up afterwards), and I heard their im- 
precations until I had reached my room, but a blessed ignorance of 
Italian shielded me from any insult in the premises. Soon my two 
light carpet-bags, which I was not allowed to carry, came up with 
a fresh demand for porterage. ' Don't you belong to the hotel?' 
'Yes.' 'Then vanish instantly!' I shut the door in his face, 
and let him growl to his heart's content ; and thus closed my first 
day in the more especial dominions of His Holiness Pius IX." 

But he was in Rome, and Rome impressed him deeply ; for, in 
the nature of Horace Greeley, the poetical element exists as un- 
deniably as the practical. He has an eye for a picture and a pros- 
pect, as well as for a potato-field and a sub-soil plough. 

The greater part of his week in Rome w^as spent in the galleries 



SCENE IN THE COLISEUM. 335 

of art ; and while feasting his eyes with their manif< Id glories 
practical suggestions for the diffusion of all that wealth of beauty 
occur to his mind. It is well, he thought, that there should be 
somewhere in the world an Emporium of the Fine Arts; but not 
well that the heart should absorb all the blood and leave the limbs 
destitute; and, " if Rome would but consider herself under a mora 
responsibility to impart as well as receive, and would liberally dis- 
pose of so many of her master-pieces as would not at all impover- 
ish her, buying in return such as could be spared her from abroad, 
and would thus enrich her collections by diversifying them, she 
would render the cause of Art a signal service, and earn the grati- 
tude of mankind, without the least prejudice to her own permanent 
well-being." 

Among the Sights of Rome, the Coliseum seems to have made 
the most lasting impression upon the mind of the traveler. He was 
fortunate in the hour of his visit. As he slowly made the circuit 
of the gigantic ruin, a body of French cavalry were exercising their 
horses along the eastern side, while in a neighboring grove tho 
rattle of the kettle-drum revealed the presence of infantry. At 
length the horsemen rode slowly away, and the attention of the 
visitors was attracted to some groups of Italians in the interior, who 
were slowly marching and chanting. 

"We entered," says Mr. Greeley, "and were witnesses of a strange, im- 
pressive ceremony. It is among the traditions of Rome that a great number 
of the early Christians were compelled by their heathen persecutors to fight 
and die here as gladiators, as a punishment for their contumacious, treasonable 
resistance to the ' lower law' then in the ascendant, which the high priests and 
circuit judges of that day were wont in their sermons and charges to demon- 
strate that every one was bound as a law-abiding citizen to obey, no matter 
what might be his private, personal convictions with regard to it. Since the 
Coliseum has been cleared of rubbish, fourteen little oratories or places of 
prayer have been cheaply constructed around its inner circumference, and 
here at certain seasons prayers are offered for the eternal bliss of the martyr- 
ed Christians of the Coliseum. These prayers were being offered on this oc- 
casion. Twenty or thirty men (priests or monks I inferred), partly bare- 
headed, but as many with their heads completely covered by hooded cloaks, 
which left only two small holes for the eyes, accompanied by a large number 
of women, marched slowly and sadly to one oratory^ chanting a prayer by the 
way, setting up their lighted tapers by its semblance of an altar, kneeling and 



336 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

praying for some minutes, then rising and proceeding to the next oratory, and 
BO on until they had repeated the service before every one. They all seemed 
to be of the poorer class, and I presume the ceremony is often repeated or the 
participators would have been much more numerous. The praying was fer- 
vent and I trust excellent, — as the music decidedly was not ; but the whole 
Bcene, with the setting sun shining redly through the shattered arches and 
upon the ruined wall, with a few French soldiers standing heedlessly by, 
was strangely picturesque, and to me affecting. I came away before it con- 
cluded, to avoid the damp night-air ; but many checkered years and scenes 
of stirring interest must intervene to efface from my memory that sun-set and 
those strange prayers in the Coliseum." 

St. Peter's, he styles the Niagara of edifices ; and, like Niagara, 
the first view of it is disappointing. In the Sistine cliapel, he ob- 
served a picture of the Death of Admiral Coligny at the Massacre of 
St. Bartholomew, and if the placing of that picture there was not 
intended to express approbation of the Massacre, he wanted to know 
what it was intended to express. 

The tenth of July was the traveler's last day in Italy. A swift 
journey through Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and North East- 
ern France brought him once more to England. In Switzerland, 
he saw everywhere the signs of frugal thrift and homely content. 
He was assailed by no beggar, cheated by no oflBcial ; though, as he 
truly remarks, he was '•very jpalpahly a stranger.' A more 'upright, 
kindly, truly religious people ' than the Catholic Swiss, he had never 
seen ; and he thought their superiority to the Italians attributable 
to their republican institutions!! He liked the Germans. Their 
good humor, their kind-heartedness, their deference to each other's 
wishes, their quiet, unostentatious manner, their self-respect, won 
his particular regard. In the main cabins of German steamboats, 
he was gratified to see " well-dressed young ladies take out their 
home-prepared dinner and eat it at their own good time without 
seeking the company and countenance of others, or troubling them- 
selves to see who was observing. A Lowell factory girl would con- 
sider this entirely out of character, and a New York milliner would 
be shocked at the idea of it." 

Nowhere, he here remarks, had he found Aristocracy a chronio 
disease, except in England. 

"Your Paris boot-black will make you a low bow in acknowl- 
edgment of a franc, but he has not a trace of the abjectness of a 



TO ENGLAND AGAIN. 337 

London waiter, and ■would evidently decline the honor of being 
kicked by a Duke. In Italy, there is little manhood but no class- 
worship ; her millions of beggars will not abase themselves one 
whit lower before a Prince than before any one else from whom 
they hope to worm a copper. The Swiss are freemen, and wear the 
fact unconsciously but palpably on their brows and beaming from 
their eyes. The Germans submit passively to arbitrary power 
which they see not how successfully to resist, but they render to 
rank or dignity no more homage than is necessary — their souls are 
still free, and their manners evince a simplicity and frankness which 
might shame, or at least instruct America." 

On the twenty-first of July, Horace Greeley was again in Lon- 
don. One incident of his journey from the court to the metropolis 
was sufficiently ludicrous. There were three Frenchmen and two 
French women in the car, going up to see the Exhibition. '-''London 
Stout,^ displayed in tall letters across the front of a tavern, attract- 
ed the attention of the party. ^ Stoat? Stootf queried one of 
them ; but the rest were as much in the dark as he, and the Amer- 
ican was as deficient in French as they in English. The befogged 
one pulled out his dictionary and read over and over all the French 
synonyms of ' Stout,' but this only increased his perplexity. ' Stout ' 
signified 'robust,' 'hearty,' 'vigorous,' 'resolute,' &c., but what 
then could ' London Stout ' be ? He closed his book at length in 
despair and resumed his observations." 

The remaining sixteen days of Mr. Greeley's three months in Eu- 
rope were busy ones indeed. The great Peace Convention was in 
session in London ; but, as he was not a delegate, he took no part 
in its proceedings. If he liad been a delegate, he tells us, that he 
should have oflFered a resolution which would have affirmed^ not 
denied, the right of a nation, wantonly invaded by a foreign army 
or intolerably oppressed by its own rulers, to resist force by force; 
a proposition which he thought might perhaps have marred the 
' harmony and happiness ' of the Convention. 

A few days after his return to London, he had the very great 
gratification of witnessing the triumph of M'Cormick's Reaping Ma- 
chine, which, as it stood in the Crystal Palace, had excited general 
derision, and been styled ' a cross between an Astley chariot, a fly- 
ing machine, and a tread-mill.' It came into the field, therefore, to 
22 



338 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

confront a tribunal prepared for its condemnation. "Before it 
stood John Bull, burlj, dogged, and determined not to be liumbug- 
ged — his judgment made up and his sentence ready to be recorded. 
Nothing disconcerted, the brown, rough, homespun Yankee in 
charge jumped on the box, starting the team at a smart walk, set- 
ting the blades of the machine in lively operation, and commenced 
raking off the grain in sheaf-piles ready for binding, — cutting a 
breadth of nine or ten feet cleanly and carefully as fast as a span 
of horses could comfortably step. There was a moment, and but a 
moment of suspense; human prejudice could hold out no longer; 
and burst after burst of involuntary cheers from the whole crowd 
proclaimed tlie triumph of the Yankee ' treadmill.' " 

A rapid tour through the north of England, Scotland, and Ire- 
land absorbed the last week of Mr. Greeley's stay in Europe. The 
grand old town of Edinburgh ' surpassed his expectations,' and he 
was amused at the passion of the Edinburghers for erecting public 
monuments to eminent men. Glasgow looked to him more like an 
American city than any other he had seen in Europe ; it was half 
Pittsburgh, half Philadelphia. Ireland seemed more desolate, more 
wretched, even in its best parts, than he had expected to find it. 
As an additional proof of his instinctive sense of means and ends, 
take this suggestion for Ireland's deliverance from the pajl of igno- 
rance that overspreads it: — "Let the Catholic Bishops unite in an 
earnest and potential call for teachers, and they can summon thou- 
sands and tens of thousands of capable and qualified persons frora 
convents, from seminaries, from cloisters, from drawing-rooms, even 
from foreign lands if need be, to devote their time and efforts to the 
work without earthly recompense or any stipulation save for a bare 
subsistence, which the less needy Catholics, or even the more liberal 
Protestants, in every parish, would gladly proffer them." 

Perfectly practicable — perfectly impossible ! The following is the 
only incident of his Irish tour that space can be found for here : — 
" Walking with a friend through one of the back streets of Galway 
beside the outlet of the Lakes, I came where a girl of ten years old 
was breaking up hard brook pebbles into suitable fragments to mend 
roads with. We halted, and M. asked her how much she received 
for that labor. She answered, ' Sixpence a car-load.' ' How long 
will it take you to break a car-load ?' ' Aiout a fortnight.^ " 



HIS OPINION OF THE ENGLISH. 339 

He concluded his brief sketch of this country with the words, 
" Alas ! unhappy Ireland." Yet, on a calmer and fuller survey of 
Ireland's case, and after an enumeration of the various measures for 
her relief and regeneration which were slowly but surely operating, 
he exclaims, " There shall yet be an Ireland to which her sons in 
distant lands may turn their eyes with a pride unmingled with sad- 
ness ; but who can say how soon !" 

Mr. Greeley, though he did not ' wholly like those grave and 
stately English,' appreciated highly and commends frankly their 
many good qualities. He praised their industry, their method, their 
economy, their sense of the practical ; sparing not, however, their 
conceit and arrogance. An English duchess, he remarks, does not 
hesitate to say, ' I cannot afford' a proposed outlay — an avowal rare- 
ly and reluctantly made by an American, even in moderate circum- 
stances. The English he thought a most iin-ideal people, even in 
their ' obstreperous loyalty' ; and when the portly and well-to-do 
Briton exclaims, ' God save the Queen,' with intense enthusiasm, he 
means, ' God save my estates, my rents, my shares, my consols, my 
expectations.' He liked the amiable women of England, so excel- 
lent at the fireside, so tame in the drawing-room ; but he doubted 
whether they could so much as comprehend the ' ideas which under- 
lie the woman's -rights movement.' The English have a sharp eye 
to business, he thought ; particularly the Free Traders. Our cham- 
pion of Protection on this subject remarks : — " The French widow 
who appended to the high-wrought eulogiura engraved on her hus- 
band's tombstone, that ' His disconsolate widow still keeps the shop 
No. 16 Rue St. Denis,' had not a keener eye to business than these 
apostles of the Economic faith. No consideration of time or place 
is regarded ; in festive meetings, peace conventions, or gatherings 
of any kind, where men of various lands and views are notoriously 
congrefi-ated, and where no reply could be made without disturbing 
the harmony and distracting the attention of the assemblage, the 
disciples of Cobden are sure to interlard their harangues with ad- 
vice to foreigners substantially thus — ' N. B. Protection is a great 
humbug and a great waste. Better abolish your tariffs, stop your 
factories, and buy at our shops. We 're the boys to give you 
thirteen pence for every shilling.' I cannot say how this affected 
others, but to me it seemed hardly more ill-mannered than impolitic." 



340 THREE MONTHS IN EUROPE. 

Yet, the better qualities of the British decidedly preponderate ; 
and he adds, that the quiet comfort and heartfelt warmth of ar 
English fireside must be felt to be appreciated. 

On Wednesday, the sixth of August, Horace Greeley was once 
more on board the steamship Baltic, homeward bound. 

"I rejoice," he wote on the morning of his departure, "I rejoice to feel 
that every hour, he»H5eforth, must lessen the distance which divides me from 
my country, whose advantages and blessings this four months' absence has 
taught me to appr^-'iate more dearly and to prize more deeply than before. 
With a glow of unvonted rapture I see our stately vessel's prow turned toward 
the setting sun, ar** strive to realize that only some ten days separate me from 
those I know an^ ^ove best on earth. Hark ! the last gun announces that the 
mail-boat has W- us, and that we are fairly afloat on our ocean journey ; the 
shores of Europe recede from our vision ; the watery waste is all around us ; 
and now, with God above and Death below, our gallant bark and her clustered 
company tofwther brave the dangers of the mighty deep. May Infinite Mercy 
watch over our onward path and bring us safely to our several homes ; for to 
die away from home and kindred seems one of the saddest calamities that 
could befall me. This mortal tenement would rest uneasily in an ocean 
ghroud : this spirit reluctantly resign that tenement to the chill and pitiless 
brine : these eyes close regretfully on the stranger skies and bleak inhospital- 
ity of the sullen and stormy main. No ! let me see once more the scenes so 
well remembered and b. loved ; let me grasp, if but once again, the hand of 
Friendship, and hear the thrilling accents of proved Affection, and when sooner 
or later the hour of mortal agony shall come, let my last gaze be fixed on eyes 
that will not forget me when I am gone, and let my ashes repose in that con- 
genial soil which, however I may there be esteemed or hated, is still ' My own 
green land forever !' " 

Neptune was more gracious to the voyager on his homeward than 
he had been on his outward passage. The skies were clearer, the 
winds more favorable and gentler. A few days, not intolerably dis- 
agreeable, landed him on the shores of Manhattan. The ship reached 
the wharf about six o'clock in the morning, cheating the expectant 
morning papers of their foreign news, which the editor of the Tri- 
bune had already ' made up' for publication on board the steamer. 
However, he had no sooner got on shore than he rushed away to 
the office, bent on getting out an ' extra' in advance of all contempo- 
raries. The compositors were all absent, of course; but boys were 
forthwith dispatched to summon them from bed and breakfast. Mean- 



RECENTLY. 341 

^rliile, the impetuous Editor-in-Chief proceeded with his own hands 
to set the matter in type, and continued to assist till the form was 
ready to be lowered away to the press-room in the basement. In 
an hour or two the streets resounded with the cry, "Extra Try- 
bune ; 'yival of the BaUic." Then^ but not till then, Horace Gree- 
ley miglit have been seen in a corner of an omnibus, going slowly 
ip town, towards his residence in Nineteenth street. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

EECENTLY. 

Deliverance from Party— A Private Platform— Last Interview with Henry Clay— Horac« 
Greeley a Farmer— He irrigates and drains- His Advice to a Young Man— The 
Daily Times — A costly Mistake — The Isms of Ihe Tribune — The Tribune gpts 
Glory — The Tribune in Parliament — Proposed Nomination for Governor — His Life 
written — A Judge's Daughter for Sale. 

During the first eight or nine volumes of the Tribune, the history 
of that newspaper and the life of Horace Greeley were one and the 
Bame thing. But the time has passed, and passed forever, when a 
New York morning paper can be the vehicle of a single mind. 
Since the year 1850, when tlie Tribune came upon the town as a 
double sheet nearly twice its original size, its affairs have had a me- 
tropolitan complexity and extensiveness, and Horace Greeley has 
run through it only as the origmal stream courses its way through 
a river swollen and expanded by many tributaries. The quaffing 
traveler cannot tell, as he rises from the shore refreshed, whether 
he has been drinking Hudson, or Mohawk, or Moodna, or two of 
them mingled, or one of the hundred rivulets that trickle into the 
ample stream upon which fleets and ' palaces' securely ride. Some 
wayfarers think they can, but they cannot; and their erroneous 
guesses are among the amusements of the tributary corps. Occa- 
sionally, however, the original Greeley flavor is recognizable to the 
dullest palate. 

The most important recent event in the history of the Tribune 



342 RECENTLY. 

occurred in ITovember, 1852, when, on the defeat of General Scott 
and the annihilation of the Whig party, it ceased to be a party 
paper, and its editor ceased to be a party man. And this blessea 
emancipation, with its effect npon the press of the country, was 
worth that disaster. We never had great newspapers in this coun- 
try while our leading papers gave allegiance to party, and never 
could have had. A great newspaper must be above everything and 
everybody. Its independence must be absolute, and then its power 
will be as nearly so as it ought to be. 

It was fit that the last triumph of party should be its greatest, and 
that triumph was secured when it enlisted such a man as Horace 
Greeley as the special and head champion of a man like General 
Scott. But as a, partisan, what other choice had he? To use his 
own language, he supported Scott and Graliam,. because, 

•* 1. They can be elected, and the others canH.. 

" 2. They are openly and thoroughly for Protection to Home Indxtsthy, 
while the others, (judged by their supporters,) lean to Free Trade. 

"3. Scott and Graham are backed by the general support of those who hold 
with us, that government may and should do much positive good." 

At the same time he 'spat upon the (Baltimore compromise, pro- 
fugitive law) platform,' and in its place, gave one of his own. As 
this private platform is the most condensed and characteristic state- 
ment of Horace Greeley's political opinions that I have seen, it may 
properly be printed here. 

OUR PLATFORM. 

" I. As to the Tariff: — Duties on Imports — specific so far as practicable, af- 
fording ample protection to undeveloped or peculiarly exposed branches of 
our National Industry, and adequate revenue for the support of the govern- 
ment and the pajunent of its debts. Low duties, as a general rule, on rude, 
bulky staples, whereof the cost of transportation is of itself equivalent to a 
heavy impost, and high duties on such fabrics, wares, &c., as come into de- 
pressing competition with our own depressed infantile or endangered pursuits. 

" II. As to National Works : — Liberal appropriations yearly for the improve- 
ment of rivers and harbors, and such eminently national enterprises as the 
Saut St. Marie canal and the Pacific railroad from the Mississippi. Cut down 
the expenditures for forts, ships, troops and warlike enginery of all kinds, and 
add largely to those for works which do not ' perish in the using,' but will re 



A PRIVATE PLATFORM. 843 

main for ages to benefit our people, strengthen the Union, and concribute far 
more to the national defense than the costly machinery of war ever could. 

" III. As to Foreign Policy : — ' Do unto others [the weak and oppressed 
as well as the powerful and mighty] as we would have them do unto us.' 
No shuffling, no evasion of duties nor shirking responsibilities, but a firm 
front to despots, a prompt rebuke to every outrage on the law of Nations, and 
a generous, active sympathy with the victims of tyranny and usurpation. 

" IV. As to Slavery : — No interference by Congress with its existence in any 
slave State, but a firm and vigilant resistance to its legalization in any national 
Territory, or the acquisition of any foreign Ter-ritory wherein slavery may ex- 
ist. A perpetual protest against the hunting of fugitive slaves in free States 
as an irresistible cause of agitation, ill feeling and alienation between the 
North and the South. A firm, earnest, infiexible testimony, in common with 
the whole non-slavehoUling Christian world, that human slavery, though le- 
gally protected, is morally wrong, and ought to be speedily terminated. 

*' V. As to State rights: — More regard for and less cant about them. 

" VI. One Presidential Teem, and no man a candidate for any ofl&ee while 
wielding the vast patronage of the national executive. 

"VII. Reform in Congress : — Payment by the session, with a rigorous de- 
duction for each day's absence, and a reduction and straightening of mileage. 
"We would suggest S2,000 compensation for the first (or long), and S 1,000 for 
the second (or short) session ; with ten cents per mile for traveling (by a bee- 
line) to and from Washington." 

The Tribune fought gallantly for Scott, and made no wry faces at 
the ' brogue,' or any other of the peculiarities of the candidate's 
stump efforts. When the sorry fight was over, the Tribune submit- 
ted with its usual good humor, spoke jocularly of the ' late whig 
party,' declared its independence of party organizations for the fu- 
ture, and avowed its continued adhesion to all the principles which 
it had hoped to promote by battling with the whigs. It would still 
war with the aggressions of the slave power, still strive for free 
homesteads, still denounce the fillibusters, and still argue for the 
Maine Law. 

" ' Doctor," said a querulous, suffering invalid who had paid a good deal of 
money for physic to little apparent purpose, "you don't seem to reach the 
Beat of my disease. Why don't you strike at the seat of my disorder 7" 

" ' Well, I will," was the prompt reply, " if you insist on it ;" and, lifting 
his cane, he smashed the brandy bottle on the sideboard.' " 

And thus ended the long connection of the New York Tribune 
with the whig party 



344 RECENTLY. 

In the summer of 1852, Horace Greeley performed the melan- 
choly duty of finishing Sargent's Life of Henry Clay. He added 
little, however, to Mr. Sargent's narrative, except the proceedings 
of Congress on the occasion of Mr. Clay's death and funeral. One 
paragraph, descriptive of the last interview between the dying 
statesman and the editor of the Tribune, claims insertion : 

"Learning from others," says Mr. Greeley, "how ill and feeble he 
was, I had not intended to call upon him, and remained two days 
tinder the same roof without asking permission to do so. Mean- 
time, however, he was casually informed of my being in Washing- 
ton, and sent me a request to call at his room. I did so, and enjoyed 
a half hour's free and friendly conversation with him, the saddest 
and the last ! His state was even worse than I feared ; he was 
already emaciated, a prey to a severe and distressing cough, and 
complained of spells of difficult breathing. I think no physician 
could have judged him likely to live two months longer. Yet his 
mind was unclouded and brilliant as ever, his aspirations for his 
country's welfare as ardent; and, though all personal ambition had 
long been banished, his interest in the events and impulses of the 
day was nowise diminished. He listened attentively to all I had 
to say of the repulsive aspects and revolting features of the Fugi- 
tive Slave Law and the necessary tendency of its operation to ex- 
cite hostility and alienation on the part of our Northern people, 
unaccustomed to Slavery, and seeing it exemplified only in the 
brutal arrest and imprisonment of some humble and inoffensive 
negro whom they had learned to regard as a neighbor. I think I 
may without impropriety say that Mr. Clay regretted that more 
care had not been taken in its passage to divest this act of features 
needlessly repulsive to Northern sentiment, though he did not deem 
any change in its provisions now practicable." 

A strange, but not inexplicable, fondness existed in the bosom of 
Horace Greeley for the aspiring chieftain of the Whig party. Yery 
masculine men, men of complete physical development, the gallant, 
the graceful, the daring, often enjoy the sincere homage of souls 
Buperior to their own ; because such are apt to place an extravagant 
value upon the shining qualities which they do not possess. From 
Webster, tKe great over-Praised, the false god of cold New Eng- 



HORACE GREELEY A FARMER. 345 

land, Horace Greeley seems ever to have shrunk with an instinc- 
tive aversion. 

As he lost his interest in party politics, his mind reverted to the 
soil. He yearned for the repose and the calm delights of country 
life. 

" As for me," ht said, at the conclusion of an address before the 
Indiana State Agricultural Society, delivered in October, 1853, "as 
for me, long-tossed on the stormiest waves of doubtful conflict and 
arduous endeavor, I have begun to feel, since the shades of forty 
years fell upon me, the weary, tempest-driven voyager's longing for 
land, the wanderer's yearning for the hamlet where in childhood he 
nestled by liis mother's knee, and was soothed to sleep on her 
breast. The sober down-hill of life dispels many illusions, while it 
develops or strengthens within us the attachment, perhaps long 
smothered or overlaid, for ' that dear hut, our home.' And so I, in 
the sober afternoon of life, when its sun, if not high, is still warm, 
have bought a few acres of land in the broad, still country, and, 
bearing thither my household treasures, have resolved to steal from 
the City's labors and anxieties at least one day in each week, wherein 
to revive as a farmer the memories of my childhood's humble 
home. And already I realize that the experiment cannot cost so 
much as it is worth. Already I find in that day's quiet an anti- 
dote and a solace for the feverish, festering cares of the weeks which 
environ it. Already my brook murmurs a soothing even-song to 
my burning, throbbing brain ; and my trees, gently stirred by the 
fresh breezes, whisper to my spirit something of their own quiet 
strength and patient trust in God. And thus do I faintly realize, 
though but for a brief and flitting day, the serene joy which shall 
irradiate the Farmer's vocation, when a fuller and truer Education 
shall have refined and chastened his animal cravings, and when 
Science shall have endowed him with her treasures, redeeming La- 
bor from drudgery while quadrupling its eflSciency, and crowning 
with beauty and plenty our bounteous, beneficent Earth." 

The portion of the 'broad, still country' alluded to in this elo- 
quent passage, is a farm of fifty acres in Westchester county, neai 
Newcastle, close to the Harlem railroad, thirty-four miles from the 
city of New York. Thither the tired editor repairs every Saturday 
morning by an early train, and there he remains directing and as- 



346 RECENTLY. 

eisting in the labors of the farm for that single day only, returning 
early enough on Sunday to hear the flowing rhetoric of Mr. Cha- 
pin's morning sermon. From church — to the office and to work. 

This farm has seen marvelous things done on it during the three 
years of Mr. Greeley's ownership. What it was when he bought it 
may be partly inferred :rom another passage of the same address : 
" I once went to look at a farm of fifty acres that I thought of buy- 
ing for a summer home, some forty miles from the city of New 
York. ■ The owner had been born on it, as I believe had his father 
before him ; but it yielded only a meager subsistence for his family, 
and he thought of selling and going West. I went over it with him 
late in June, passing through a well-filled barn-yard which had not 
been disturbed that season, and stepping thence into a corn-field of 
five acres, with, a like field of potatoes just beyond it. ' Why, 
neighbor!' asked I, in astonishment, 'how could you leave all this 
manure so handy to your plowed land, and plant ten acres without 
any V ' O, I was sick a good part of the spring, and so hurried 
that I could not find time to haul it out.' ' Why, suppose you had 
planted but five acres in all, and emptied your barn-yard on those 
five, leaving the residue untouched, don't you think you would 
have harvested a larger crop ?' ' Well, perhaps I should,' was the 
poor farmer's response. It seemed never before to have occurred to 
him that he could let alone a part of his land. Had he progressed 
so far, he might have ventured thence to the conclusion that it is 
less expensive and more profitable to raise a full crop on five acres 
than half a crop on ten. I am sorry to say we have a good many 
such farmers still left at the East." But, he might have added, 
Horace Greeley is not one of them. He did not, however, and the 
deficiency shall here be supplied. 

The farm is at present a practical commentary upon the oft- 
repeated recommendations of the Tribune with regard to ' high 
farming.' It consisted, three years ago, of grove, bog, and exhaust- 
ed upland, in nearly equal proportions. In the grove, which is a 
fine growth of hickory, hemlock, iron- wood and oak, a small white 
cottage is concealed, built by Mr. Greeley, at a cost of a few hun- 
dred dollars. The farm-buildings, far more costly and expensive, 
are at the foot of the hill on which the house stands, and around 
them are the gardens. The marshy land, whicli was formerly verj 



HE IRRIGATES AND DRAINS. 847 

wet, 1 ery boggy, and quite useless, has been drained by a system 
of ditches and tiles ; the bogs have been pared off and burnt, tlie 
lano plowed and planted, and made exceedingly productive. The 
upland has been prepared for irrigation, the w^ater being supplied 
by a brook, which tumbled down the hill through a deep glen. Its 
course was arrested by a dam, and from the reservoir thus formed, 
pipes are laid to the different fields, which can be inundated by 
the turning of a cock. The experiment of irrigation, however, 
has been suspended. Last spring the brook, swollen with rage 
at the loss of its ancient liberty, burst through the dam, and scat- 
tered four thousand dollars' worth of solid masonry in the space 
of a minute and a half. Tliis year a new attempt will be made to 
reduce it to submission, and conduct its waters in peaceful and fer- 
tilizing rivulets down the rows of corn and potatoes. Then Mr. 
Greeley can take down his weather-cock, and smile in the midst 
of drought, water his crops with less trouble than he can water his 
horses, and sow turnips in July, regardless of the clouds. If a crop 
is well put in the ground, and well cared for as it progresses, its 
■perfect success depends upon two things, water and sunshine. 
Science has enabled the farmer partly to regulate the supply of the 
latter, and perfectly to regulate the supply of the former. The 
slant of the hills, the reflection of walls, glass covers, trees, awn- 
ings, and other contrivances, may be made to concentrate or ward 
off the rays of the sun. Irrigation and drainage go far to complete 
the farmer's independence of the wayward weather. In all the 
operations of his little farm, Mr. Greeley takes the liveliest interest, 
and he means to astonish his neighbors with some wonderful crops, 
by-and-by, when he has everything in training. Indeed, he may 
have done so already ; as, in the list of prizes awarded at our last 
Agricultural State Fair, held in New York, October, 1854, we read, 
under the head of ' vegetables,' these two items : — ' ' Turnips, H, 
Greeley, Chappaqua, Westchester Co., Two Dollars," (the second 
prize) ; " Twelve second-best ears of White Seed Corn, H, Greeley, 
Two Dollars." Looking down over the reclaimed swamp, all brl^lit 
now with waving flax, he said one day, "All else that I have done 
may be of no avail ; but what I have done here is done ; it will last." 
A private letter, written about this time, appeared in the country 
papers, and still emerges occasionally. A young man wrote o Mr. 



*.348 RECENTLY. 

Greeley, requesting his advice upon a project of going to coUega 
and studying law. The reply was as follows : 

"My Dear Sir, — Had you asked me whether I would advise you to desert 
agriculture for law, I should have answered no ! very decidedly. There is 
already a superabundance of lawyers, coupled with a great scarcity of good 
farmers. Why carry your coals to Newcastle 1 

" As to a collegiate education, my own lack of it probably disqualifies me 
to appreciate it fully ; but I think you might better be learning to fiddle. 
And if you are without means, I would advise you to hire ten acres of good 
land, work ten hours a day on it, for five days each week, and devote all your 
spare hours to reading and study, especially to the study of agricultural 
science, and thus ' owe no man anything,' while you receive a thorough 
practical education. Such is not the advice you seek ; nevertheless, I remain 
yours, Horace Greeley." 

This letter may serve as a specimen of hundreds of similar ones. 
Probably there never lived a man to whom so many perplexed in- 
dividuals applied for advice and aid, as to Horace Greeley. He 
might with great advantage have taken a hint from the practice of 
Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington, who, it is said, had forms 
of reply printed, which he filled up and dispatched to anxious cor- 
respondents, with commendable promptitude. From facts which I 
have observed, and from others of which I have heard, I think it 
safe to say, that Horace Greeley receives, on an average, five appli- 
cations daily for advice and assistance. His advice he gives very 
freely, but the wealth of Astor would not suffice to answer all his 
begging letters in the way the writers of them desire. 

In the fall of 1852, the Daily Times was started by Mr. H. J, 
Raymond, an event which gave an impetus to the daily press of the 
city. The success of the Times was signal and immediate, for three 
reasons: 1, it was conducted with tact, industry and prudence; 
2, it was not the Herald ; 3, it was not the Tribune. Before the 
Times appeared, the Tribune and Herald shared the cream of the 
daily paper business between them ; but there was a large class 
who disliked the Tribune's principles and the Herald's want of 
princijile. The majority of people take a daily paper solely to as- 
certain what is going on in the world. They are avers » to profli- 
gacy and time-serving, and yet are offended at the independent 
avowal of ideas in advance of their own. And though Horace 



A COSTLY MISTAKE. ^^9 

Greeley is not the least conservative of men, yet, from his practice 
of giving every now thought and every new man a heaiing in the 
columns of his paper, unthinking persons received the impression 
that he was an advocate of every new idea, and a champion of every 
new man. They thought the Tribune was an unsafe, disorganizing 
paper. " An excellent paper," said they, " and honest, but then it 's 
BO full of isms .^" The Times stepped in with a complaisant bow^ 
and won over twenty thousand of the ism-hating class in a single 
year, and yet without reducing the circulation of either of its elder 
rivals. Wliere those twenty thousand subscribers came from is one 
of the mysteries of journalism. 

In the spring of 1853 the Tribune signalized its ' entrance into 
its teens' by making a very costly mistake. It enlarged its borders 
to such an extent that the price of subscription did not quite cover 
the cost of the white paper upon which it was printed, thus throw- 
ing the burden of its support upon the advertiser. And this, too, 
in the face of the fact that the Tribune, though the best vehicle of 
advertising then in existence, was in least favor among the class 
w^hose advertising is' the most profitable. Yet it was natural for 
Horace Greeley to commit an error of this kind. Years ago he had 
written, " Better a dinner of herbs with a large circulation than a 
stalled ox with a small one." And, in announcing the enlargement, 
he said, " We are confessedly ambitious to make the Tribune the 
leading journal of America, and have dared and done somewhat to 
that end." 

How much he ' dared' in the case of this enlargement may be in- 
ferred from the fact that it involved an addition of $1,044 to the 
weekly, $54,329 to the annual, expenses of the concern. Yet he 
' dared' not add a cent to the price of the paper, which it is thought 
he might have done with perfect safety, because those who like the 
Tribune like it very much, and will have it at any price. Men have 
been heard to talk of their Bible, their Shakspeare, and their Tri- 
bune, as the three necessities of their spiritual life ; while those 
who dislike it, dislike it excessively, and are wont to protest that 
they should deem their houses defiled by its presence. The Tribune, 
however, stepped bravely out under its self-imposed load of white 
paper. In one year the circulation of the Daily increased from 
17,640 to 26,880, the Semi- Weekly from 3.120 to 11,400, the Week- 



350 RECENTLY. 

]j from 51,000 to 103,680, the California Tribune fi-om 2,800 to 
8,500, and the receipts of the office increased $70,900. The profits, 
however, were inadequate to reward suitably the exertions of 
its proprietors, and recently the paper was slightly reduced in 
size. 

The enlargement called public attention to the career and the 
merits of the Tribune in a remarkable manner. The press gener- 
ally applauded its spirit, ability and courage, but deplored its isms, 
which gave rise to a set article in the Tribune on the subject of isms. 
This is the substance of the Tribune's opinions of isms and israists. 
It is worth considering: 

" A very natural division of mankind is that which contemplates them in 
two classes — those who think for themselves, and those who have their think- 
ing done by others, dead or living. With the former class, the paramount 
consideration is — ' "What is right ?' With the latter, the first inquiry is — 
' What do the majority, or the great, or the pious, or the fashionable think 
about it 7 How did our fathers regard it 7 What will Mrs. Grundy say V 

" And truly, if the life were not more than meat — if its chief ends were 
wealth, station and luxury — then the smooth and plausible gentlemen who as- 
sent to whatever is popular without inquiring or caring whether it is essential- 
ly true or false, are the Solomons of their generation. 

" Yet in a world so full as this is of wrong and suffering, of oppression and 
degradation, there must be radical causes for so many and so vast practical 
evils. It cannot be that the ideas, beliefs, institutions, usages, prejudices, 
whereof such gigantic miseries are born — wherewith at least they co-exist — 
transcend criticism and rightfully refuse scrutiny. It cannot be that the 
springs are pure whence flow such turbid and poisonous currents. 

" Now the Reformer — the man who thinks for himself and acts as his own 
judgment and conscience dictate — is very likely to form erroneous opinions. 
* * * But Time will confirm and establish his good works and gently 
amend his mistakes. The detected error dies ; the misconceived and rejected 
truth is but temporarily obscured and soon vindicates its claim to general ac- 
ceptance and regard. 

" ' The world does move,' and its motive power, under God, is the fearless 
thought and speech of those who dare be in advance of their time — who are 
sneered at and shunned through their days of struggle and of trial as luna- 
tics, dreamers, impracticables and visionaries — men of crotchets, of vagaries, 
or of ' isms.' These are the masts and sails of the ship, to which Conser- 
vatism answers as ballast. The ballast is important — at times indispensable 
— but it would be of no account if the ship were not bound to go ahead." 



THE TRIBUNE IN PARLIAMENT. 351 

Many papers, however, gave the Tribune its full due of apprecia- 
tion and praise. Two notices which appeared at the time are worth 
copying, at least in part. The Newark Mercury gave it this un- 
equaled and deserved commendation :— '' We never Jcneio a man of 
illiberal sentiments^ one unjust to his worTcmen^ and groveling in his 
aspirations^ who liked the Tribune; and it is rare to find one with lib- 
eral views who does not admit its claims upon the public regard." 

The St. Joseph Valley Register, a paper published at South Bend, 
Indiana, held the following language : 

" The influence of the Tribune upon public opinion is greater even than its 
conductors claim for it. Its Isms, with scarce an exception, though the people 
may reject them at first, yet ripen into strength insensibly. A few years since 
the Tribune commenced the advocacy of the principle of Free Lands for the 
Landless. The first bill upon that subject, presented by Mr. Greeley to Con- 
gress, was hooted out of that body. But who doubts what the result would be, 
if the people of the whole nation had the right to vote up<^n the question to- 
day 1 It struck the first blow in earnest at the corruptions of the Mileage sys- 
tem, and in return. Congressmen of all parties heaped opprobrium upon it, and 
calumny upon its Editor. A corrupt Congress may postpone its Reform, but 
is there any doubt of what nine-tenths of the whole people would accomplish 
on this subject if direct legislation were in their hands? It has inveighed in 
severe language against the flimsy penalties which the American legislatures 
have imposed for offenses upon female virtue. And how many States, our own 
among the number, have tightened up their legislation upon that .'subject 
within the last half-dozen years. The blows that it directs against Intemper- 
ance have more power than the combined attacks of half the distinctive Tem- 
perance Journals in the land. It has contended for some plan by which the 
people should choose their Presidents rather than National Conventions ; and 
he must be a careless observer of the progress of events who does not see that 
the Election of 1856 is more likely to be won by a Western Statesman, pledged 
solely to the Pacific Railroad and Honest Government, than by any political 
nominee? And, to conclude, the numerous Industrial Associations of Workers 
to manufacture Iron, Boots and Shoes, Hats, &g., on their own account, with 
the Joint Stock Family Blocks of Buildings, so popular now in New York, 
Model Wash-houses, Ac, <fcc., seem like a faint recognition at least of the main 
principles of Fourierism (whose details we like as little as any one), Op- 
portunity for Work for all, and Economy in the Expenses and Labor of the 
Family." 

From across the Atlantic, also, came compliments for the Tri- 
bune In one of the debates in the House of Commons upon the 

17 



3 '^2 RECENTLY. 

abolition of the advertisement duly, Mr. Bright used a copy of the 
Tribune, as Burke once did a French Republican dagger, for the 
purposes of his argument. Mr. Bright said : 

" He had a newspaper there (the New York Tribune), which he was bound 
to say, was as good as any published in England this week. [The Hon. Mem- 
ber here opened out a copy of the New York Tribune, and exhibited it to the 
House.] It was printed with a finer type than any London daily paper. It 
was exceedingly good as a journal, quite sufficient for all the purposes of a 
newspaper. [Spreading it out before the House, the honorable gentleman de- 
tailed its contents, commencing with very numerous advertisements.] It con- 
tained various articles, amongst others, one against public dinners, in which he 
thought honorable members would fully agree — one criticising our Chancellor 
of the Exchequer's budget, in part justly — and one upon the Manchester 
school ; but he must say, as far as the Manchester school went, it did not do 
them justice at all. [Laughter.] He ventured to say that there was not a 
better paper than this in London. Moreover, it especially wrote in favor of 
Temperance and Anti-Slavery, and though honorable members were not all 
members of the Temperance Society perhaps, they yet, he was sure, all ad- 
mitted the advantages of Temperance, while not a voice could be lifted there 
in favor of Slavery. Here, then, was a newspaper advocating great princi- 
ples, and conducted in all respects with the greatest propriety — a newspaper 
in which he found not a syllable that he might not put on his table and allow 
his wife and daughter to read with satisfaction. And this was placed on the 
table every morning for Id. [Hear, hear.] What he wanted, then, to ask the 
Government, was this — How comes it, and for what good end, and by what 
contrivance of fiscal oppression — for it can be nothing else — was it, that while 
the workman of New York could have such a paper on his breakfast table 
every morning for Id., the workman of London must go without or pay five- 
pence for the accommodation 7 [Hear, hear.] How was it possible that the 
latter could keep up with his transatlantic competitor in the race, if one had 
daily intelligence of everything that was stirring in the world, while the other 
was kept completely i» ignorance ? [Hear, hear.] "Were they not running a 
race, in the face of the world, with the people of America ? Were not the 
Collins and Cunard lines calculating their voyages to within sixteen minutea 
of time ? And if, while such a race was going on, the one artisan paid five- 
pence for the daily intelligence which the other obtained for a penny, how 
was it possible that the former could keep his place in the international rival- 
ry 1 [Hear, hear.]" 

This visible, tangible, and tfhanswerable u'gument had its effect. 
The advertisement duty has been abolished, and now only the stamp 
duty intervenes between tte English workingman and his penny 



AN EDITORIAL REPARTEE. 



353 



paper — the future Tribune of the Enghsh people, which is to ex- 
pound their duties and defend their rights. 

lu tlie summer of 1854, Mr. Greeley was frequently spoken of in 
the papers in connection with the oflSce of Governor of the State of 
New York. A very little of the usual maneuvering on his part 
would have secured his norainatr n, and if he had been nominated, 
he would have been elected by a majority that would have surprised 
politicians by trade. 

In 1854, his life was written by a young and unknown scribblei 
for the press, who had observed his career with much interest, and 
who knew enough of the story of his life to be aware, that, if sim- 
ply told, that story would be read with pleasure and do good. 
This volume is the result of his labors. 

Here, this chapter had ended, and it was about to be consigned 
to the hands of the printer. But an event transpires which, it is 
u.rgently suggested, ought to have notice. It is nothing more than 
a new and peculiarly characteristic editorial repartee, or rather, a' 
public reply by Mr. Greeley to a private letter. And though the 
force of the reply was greatly, and quite unnecessarily, diminished 
by the publication of the correspondent's name and address, con- 
trary to his request, yet the correspondence seems too interesting 
to be omitted : 

THE LETTER. 

" County, Miss., Sept. 1854. 

-' Hon. Horace Greeley, New York City : 

" My object in addressing you these lines is this : I own a negro girl named 
Catharine, a bright mulatto, aged between twenty-eight and thirty years, 
who is intelligent and beautiful. The girl wishes to obtain her freedom, and 
reside in either Ohio or New York State ; and, to gratify her desire, I am 
willing to take the sum of $1,000, which the friends of liberty will no doubt 
make up. Catharine, as she tells me, was born near Savannah, Ga., and was 
a daughter of a Judge Hopkins, and, at the age of seven years, accompanied 
her young mistress (who was a legitimate daughter of the Judge's) on a visit 
to New Orleans, where she (the legitimate) died. Catharine was then seized 
and sold by the Sheriff of New Orleans, under attachment, to pay the debts 
contracted in the city by her young mistress, and was purchased by a Dutch- 
man named Shinoski. Shinoski, being pleased with the young girl's looks^ 
placed her in a quadroon school, and gave her a good education. The girl can 
23 



354 RECENTLY. 

read and write as well or better than myself, and speaks the Dutch and 
French languages almost to perfection. When the girl attained the age of 
eighteen, Shinoski died, and she was again sold, and fell into a trader's hands, 
by the name of John Valentine, a native of your State. Valentine brought 

her up to , where I purchased her in 1844, for the sura of SI, 150. 

Catharine is considered the best seamstress and cook in this county, and I 
could to-morrow sell her for $1,600, but I prefer letting her go for 81,000, so 
that she may obtain her freedom. She has had opportunities to get to a free 
State, and obtain her freedom ; but she says that she will never run away to 
do it. Her father, she says, promised to free h«r, and so did Shinoski. If I was 
able, I would free her without any compensation, but losing $15,000 on the 
last presidential election has taken very near my all. 

"Mr. Geo. D. Prentice, editor of the Louisville (Ky.) Journal, knows me 
very well by character, to whom (if you wish to make any inquiries regard- 
ing this matter) you are at liberty to refer. 

*' If you should make any publication in your paper in relation to this 
matter, you will please not mention my name in connection with it, nor the 
place whence this letter was written. Catharine is honest ; and, for the ten 
years that I have owned her, I never struck her a lick, about her work or 
anything else. 

" If it was not that I intend to emigrate to California, money could not 
buy her. 

" I have given you a complete and accurate statement concerning this girl, 
and am willing that she shall be examined here, or in Louisville, Ky., before 
the bargain is closed. 

" Very respectfully. 

l^Name in full.] 

REPLY. 

" Mr. • , I have carried your letter of the 28th ult. in my hat for 

several days, awaiting an opportunity to answer it I now seize the first op- 
portune moment, and, as yours is one of a class with which I am frequently 
favored, I will send you my reply through the Tribune, wishing it regarded 
as a general answer to all such applications. 

" Let me begin by frankly stating that I am not engaged in the slave 
trade, and do not now contemplate embarking in that business ; but no man 
can say confidently what he may or may not become ; and, if I ever should 
engage in the traffic you suggest, it will be but fair to remember you as 
among my prompters to undertake it. Yet even then I must decline any 
such examination as you proflTer of the property you wish to dispose of Your 
biography is so full and precise, so frank and straight-forward, that I prefer 
to rest satisfied with your assurance in the premises. 

'* You will see that I have disregarded your request that your name and 
residence should be suppressed by me. That request seems to me inspired by 



A judge's daughter for sale. 355 

a modesty and self- sacrifiee unsuited to the Age of Brass we live in. Are 
you not seeking to do a humane and generous actl Are you not proposing 
10 tax yourself $600 in order to raise an intelligent, capable, deserving 
woman from slavery to freedom 7 Are you not proposing to do this in a 
manner perfectly lawful and unobjectionable, involving no surrender or com- 
promise of ' Southern Rights' 7 My dear sir ! such virtue must not be allow- 
ed to 'blush unseen.' Our age needs the inspiration of heroic examples, and 
those who would ' do good by stealth, and blush to find it Fame,' must — by gentle 
violence, if need be — stand revealed to an amazed, admiring world. True, it 
might (and might not) have been still more astounding but for your unlucky 
gambling on the late presidential election, wherein it is hard to tell whether 
you who lost your money or those who won their president were most unfortun- 
ate. I afifectionately advise you both never to do so again. 

'• And now as to this daughter of the late Judge Hopkins of Savannah, 
Georgia, whom you propose to sell me : 

" I cannot now remember that I have ever heard Slavery justified on any 
ground which did not assert or imply that it is the best condition for the negro. 
The blacks, we are daily told, cannot take care of themselves, but sink into 
idleness, debauchery, squalid poverty and utter brutality, the moment the 
master's sustaining rule and care are withdrawn. If this is true, how dare 
you turn this poor dependent, for whose well-being you are responsible, over 
to me, who neither would nor could exert a master's control over her 7 If this 
slave ought not to be set at liberty, why do you ask me to bribe you with 
81,000 to do her that wrong 7 If she ought to be, why should I pay you 
$1,000 for doing your duty in the premises 7 You hold a peculiar and respon- 
sible relation to her, through your own voluntary act, but I am only related 
to her through Adam, the same as to every Esquimaux, Patagonian, or New- 
Zealander. w hatever may be your duty in the premises, why should I be 
called on to help you discharge it ? 

" Full as your account of this girl is, you say nothing of her children, 
though such she undoubtedly has, whether they be also those of her several 
masters, as she was, or their fathers wore her fellow-slaves. If she is liber- 
ated and comes North, what is to become of them 7 How is she to be recon- 
ciled to leaving them in slavery 7 How can we be assured that the masterg 
wno own or to whom you will sell them before leaving for California, will 
prove as humane and liberal as you are 7 

" You inform me that ' the friends of Liberty ' in New York or hereabout 
•will no doubt make up' the $1,000 you demand, in order to give this daugh- 
ter of a Georgia Judge her freedom. I think and trust you misapprehend 
them. For though they have, to my certain knowledge, under the impulse of 
epeciai appeals to their sympathies, and in view of peculiar dangers or hard- 
Bhips, paid a great deal more money than they could comfortably spare (few 
of them being ri/ih) to buy individual slaves out of bondage, yet their judg 



356 RECENTIiT. 

ment has never approved such payment of tribute to man-thieves, ani every 
day's earnest consideration causes it to be regarded with less and less favor. 
For it is not the snatching of here and there a person from Slavery, at the 
possible rate of one for every thousand increase of our slave population, that 
they desire, but the overthrow and extermination of the slave-holding system ; 
and this end, they realize, is rather hindered than helped by their buying 
here and there a slave into freedom. If by so buying ten thousand a year, 
at a cost of Ten Millions of Dollars, they should confirm you and other slave- 
holders in the misconception that Slavery is regarded without abhorrence by 
intelligent Christian freemen at the North, they would be doing great harm 
to their cause and injury to their fellow-Christians in bondage. You may 
have heard, perhaps, of the sentiment proclaimed by Decatur to the slave- 
holders of the Barbary Coast — ' Millions for defense — not a cent for tribute 1' 
— and perhaps also of its counterpart in the Scotch ballad — 

Ins^^iad of broad pieces, we '11 pay them broadswords ;'— 

but ' the friendt. of Liberty ' in this quarter will fight her battle neither with 
lead nor steel — much less with gold. Their trust is in the might of Opinion — 
in the resistless power of Truth where Discussion is untrammeled and Com- 
mercial Intercourse constant — in the growinjg Humanity of our age — in the 
deepening sense of Common Brotherhood — in the swelling hiss of Christen- 
dom and the just benignity of God. In the earnest faith that these must soon 
eradicate a wrong so gigantic and so palpable as Christian Slavery, they se- 
renely await the auspicious hour which must surely come. 

" Requesting you, Mr. , not to suppress my name in case you see fit 

to reply to this, and to be assured that I write no letter that I am ashamed 
of, I remain, Yours, so-so, 

" Horace Greeley." 

And here, ciosing the last volume of the Tribune, the reader is 
invited to a survey of the place whence it was issued, to glance at 
the routine of the daily press, to witness the scene in which our 
hero has labored so long. The Tribune building remains to b© ex- 
hibited. 




[MR GREELEY AND MR. DANA IN THE EDITORIAL ROOMS-l 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

rhe streets before daybreak— Waking the newsboys— Morning scene in the press-room 
—The Compositor's room— The four Phalanxes— The Tribune Directory— A lull in 
the Tribune office — A glance at the paper — The advertisements — Telegraphic mar- 
vels — Marine Intelligence — New Publications — Letters from the people — Editorial 
articles— The editorial Rooms- The Sanctum Sanctorum— Solon Robinson— Bay- 
ard Taylor— William Henry Fry— George Ripley— Charles A. Dana— F. J. Ottarson 
— George M. Snow— Enter Horace Greeley — His Preliminary botheration — The 
composing-room in the erening- The editors at work— Mr. Greeley's manner of 
writing — Midnight— Three o'clock in tho morning — The carriers. 

"We are in the streets, walking from the regions where money is 
spent towards those narrow and crooked places wherein it is earned. 
The day is about to dawn, but the street lights are still burning, and 
the greater part of the million people who live within sight of the 
City Hall's illuminated dial, are lying horizontal and unconscious, in 
the morning's last slumber. The streets are neither silent nor de- 
serted — the streets of New York never are. The earliest milkmen 
have begun their morning crow, squeak, whoop, and yell. The 
first omnibus has not yet come down town, but the butcher's 
carts, heaped with horrid flesh, with men sitting upon it reeking 
with a night's carnage, are rattling along Broadway at the furious 
pace for which the butcher's carts of all nations are noted. The 
earliest workmen are abroad, dinner-kettle in hand ; carriers with 
their bundles of newspapers slung anross their backs by a strap, 
are emergiug from Nassau street, and making their way across the 
Park — towards all the ferries — up Broadway — up Chatham street — 
to wherever their district of distribution begins. The hotels have 
just opened their doors and lighted up their offices ; and drowsy 
waiters are perambulating the interminable passages, knocking up 
passengers for the early trains, and waking up everybody else. In 
unnumbered kitchens the breakfast fire is kindling, but not yet, in 
any except the market restaurants, is a cup of coffee attainable. 
Th^ very groggeries — strange to see — are closed. Apparently, tho 

357 



358 DAY AND NIGHT IN*THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

last drankard has toppled home, and the last debauchee has skulked 
like a thieving hound to his own bed ; for the wickedness of the 
night has been done, and the work of the day is beginning. 
There is something in the aspect of the city at this liour — the stai*s 
glittering over-head — the long lines of gas-lights that stretch away 
in every direction — the few wayfarers stealing in and out among 
them in silence, Uke spirits — the myriad sign-boards so staring now, 
and useless — the houses all magnified in the imperfect light— so 
many evidences of intense life around, and yet so little of life vis- 
ibly present — which, to one who sees it for the first time (and few 
of us have ever seen it), is strangely impressive. 

The Tribune building is before us. It looks as we never saw it 
look before. The office is closed, and a gas-light dimly burning 
shows that no one is in it. The dismal inky aperture in Spruce 
street by which the upper regions of the Tribune den are usually 
reached is shut, and the door is locked. That glare of light which 
on all previous nocturnal walks we have seen illuminating the 
■windows of the third and fourth stories, revealing the bobbing com- 
positor in his paper cap, and the busthng night-editor making up 
his news, shines not at this hour; and those windows are undistin- 
guished from the lustreless ones of the houses adjacent. Coiled up 
on the steps, stretched out on the pavement, are half a dozen 
sleeping newsboys. Two or three others are awake and up, of 
whom one is devising and putting into practice various modes of 
suddenly waking the sleepers. He rolls one off the step to the 
pavement, the shock of which is very effectual. He deals another 
■who lies temptingly exposed, a 'loud-resounding' slap, which 
brings the slumberer to his feet, and to his fists, in an instant. Into 
the ear of a third he yells the magic word Fire^ a word which 
the New York newsboy never hears with indifference ; the sleeper 
starts up, but perceiving the trick, growls a curse or two, and ad- 
dresses himself again to sleep. In a few minutes all the boys are 
awake, and taking their morning #xercise of scuffling. The base- 
ment of the building, we observe, is all a-glow with light, though 
the clanking of the press is silent. The carrier's entrance is open, 
and we descend into the fiery bowels of the street. 

We are in the Tribune's press-room. It is a large, low, cellar-like 
apartment, unceiled, white-washed, inky, and unclean, with a vast 



MORNING SCENE IN THE PRESS ROOM. 359 

folding table in the middle, tall heaps of dampened paper all aboot, 
a quieth'-running steam engine of nine-horse power on one side, 
twenty-five inky men and boys variously employed, and the whole 
brilliantly lighted np by jets of gas, numerous and flaring. On one 
side is a kind of desk or pulpit, with a table before it, and the 
•whole separated from the rest of the apartment by a rail. In the 
pulpit, the night-clerk stands, counts and serves out the papers, 
with a nonchalant and graceful rapidity, that must be seen to be 
appreciated. The regular carriers were all served an hour ago; 
they have folded their papers and gone their several ways ; and 
early risers, two miles off, have already read the news of the Hay. 
The later newsboys, now, keep dropping in, singly, or in squads of 
three or four, each with his money ready in his. hand. Usually, no 
words pass between them and the clerk ; he either knows how 
many papers they have come for, or they show him by exhibiting 
their money ; and in three seconds after his eye lights upon a newly- 
arrived dirty face, he has counted the requisite number of papers, 
counted the money for them, and thrown the papers in a heap into 
the boy's arms, who slings them over his shoulder and hurries off 
for his supply of Times and Heralds. Occasionally a woman comes 
in for a few papers, or a little girl, or a boy so small that he cannot 
see over the low rail in front of the clerk, and is obliged to an- 
nounce his presence and his desires by holding above it his little 
cash capital in his little black paw. In another part of the press- 
room, a dozen or fifteen boys are folding papers for the early mails, 
and folding them at the average rate of thirty a minute. A boy 
has folded sixty papers a minute in that press-room. Each paper 
has to be folded six times, and then laid evenly on the pile ; and 
the velocity of movement required for the performance of such a 
minute's work, the reader can have no idea of till he sees it done. 
As a feat, nothing known to the sporting world approaches it. The 
huge presses, that shed six printed leaves at a stroke, are in deep 
vaults adjoining the press-room. They are motionless now, but the 
gas that lias lighted them during their morning's work still spurts 
out in flame all over them, and men with blue shirts and black 
faces are hoisting out tlie ' forms ' that have stamped their story on 
thirty thousand sheets. The vaults are oily, inky, and warm. Let 
us ascend. 



360 DAT AND NIGHT iN" THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

The duy has dawned. As we approach the stairs that lead to the 
apper stories, we get a peep into a small, paved yard, where a 
group of pressmen, blue-overalled, ink-smeared, and pale, are wash- 
ing tlieraselves and the ink-rollers ; and looking, in the dim light of 
the morning, like writhing devils. The stairs of the Tribune building 
are supposed to be the dirtiest in the world. By their assistance, 
however, we wind our upward way, past the editorial rooms in the 
third story, which are locked, to the composing-room in the fourth, 
which are open, and in which the labor of transposing the news of 
tlie morning to the form of the weekly paper is in progress. Only 
two men are present, the foreman, Mr. Rooker, and one of his assist- 
ants. Neither of them wish to be spoken to, as their minds are 
occupied with a task that requires care ; but we are at liberty to 
look around. 

The composing-room of the Tribune is, I believe, the most con- 
venient, complete, and agreeable one in the country. It is very 
spacious, nearly square, lighted by windows on two sides, and by 
sky-lights from above. It presents an ample expanse of type-fonts, 
gas-jets with large brown-paper shades above them, long tables 
covered with columns of bright, copper-faced type, either ' dead ' 
or waiting its turn for publication; and whatever else appertains to 
the printing of a newspaper. Stuffed into corners and interstices 
are aprons and slippers in curious variety. Pasted on the walls, 
lamp-shades, and doors, we observe a number of printed notices, 
from the perusal of which, aided by an occasional word from the 
obliging foreman, we are enabled to penetrate the mystery, and 
comprehend the routine, of the place. 

Here, for example, near the middle of the apartment, are a row 
of hooks, labeled respectively, 'Leaded Brevier;' 'Solid Brevier;' 
'Minion;' 'Proofs to revise;' 'Compositors' Proofs — let no profane 
hand touch them except Smith's;' 'Bogus minion— when there is 
no other copy to be given out, then take from this hook.' Upon 
these hooks, the foreman hangs the ' copy ' as he receives it from 
below, and the men take it in turn, requiring no further direction 
as to the kind of type into which it is to be set. The ' bogus-min- 
ion ' hook contains matter not intended to be used ; it is designed 
merely to keep the men constantly employed, so as to obviate the 
necessity of their making petty charges for lost time, and thus com. 



THE TRIBUNE DIRECTORY. 361 

plicating their accounts. Below the ' bogus-hook,' there appears 
this 'Particular Notice:' 'This copy must be set, and the Takes 
emptied, with the same care as the rest.' From which we may in- 
fer, that a man is inclined to slight work that he knows to be use- 
less, even though it be paid for at the usual price per thousand. 

Another printed paper lets us into another secret. It is a list of the 
compositors employed in the office, divided into four " Phalanxes" of 
about ten men each, a highly advantageous arrangement, devised by 
Mr. Rooker. At night, when the copy begins to " slack up," i. e. 
when the work of the night approaches completion, one phalanx is 
dismissed ; then another ; then another ; then the last ; and the 
phalanx which leaves first at night comes first in the morning, and 
so on. The men who left work at eleven o'clock at night must be 
again in the office at nine, to distribute type and set up news for the 
evening edition of the paper. The second phalanx begins work at 
two, the third at five; and at seven the whole company nmst be at 
their posts; for, at seven, the business of the night begins in earnest. 
Printers will have their joke — as appears from this list. It is set in 
double columns, and as the number of men happened to be an un- 
even one, one name was obliged to occupy a line by itself, and it 
appears thus — " Baker, (the teat-pig.)" 

The following notice deserves attention from the woi'd with which 
it begins : " Gentlemen desiring to wash and soak their distributing 
matter will please use hereafter the metal galleys I had cast for the 
purpose, as it is ruinous to galleys having wooden sides to keep wet 
type in them locked up. Thos. N. Eooker." It took the world an 
unknown number of thousand years to arrive at that word ' GEN- 
TLEMEN.' Indeed, the world has not arrived at it ; but there it is, in 
the composing-room of the New York Tribune, legible to all visitors. 

Passing by other notices, such as " Attend to the gas-meter on 
Wednesdays and Saturdays, and to the clock on Monday morning,'* 
we may spend a minute or two in looking over a long printed cata- 
logue, posted on the door, entitled, " Tribune Directory. Corrected 
May 10, 1854. A list of Editors, Reporters-, Publishers, Clerks, 
Compositors, Proof-Readers, Pressmen, &c., employed on the New 
York Tribune." 

From this Directory one may learn that the Editor of the Tribune 
is H )race Greeley, the Managing-Editor Charles A. Dana, the Asso- 



362 DAY AND NIGHT IN* THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

ciate-Editors, James S, Pike, William IT. Fry, George Ripley, George 
M. Snow, Bayard Taylor, F. J. Ottarson, William Newman, B. Brock 
way, Solon Robinson, and Donald 0. Henderson. We perceive also 
that Mr. Ottarson is the City Editor, and that his assistants are in 
number fourteen. One of these keeps an eye on the Police, chron- 
icles arrests, walks the hospitals in search of dreadful accidents, and 
keeps the public advised of the state of its health. Three report 
lectures and speeches. Another gathers items of intelligence in 
Jersey City, Newark, and parts adjacent. Others do the same in 
Brooklyn and Williamsburgh. One gentleman devotes himself to 
the reporting of fires, and the movements of the military. Two 
examine and translate from the New York papers which are pub- 
lished in the German, French, Italian and Spanish languages. Then, 
there is a Law Reporter, a Police Court Reporter, and a Collector 
of Marine Intelligence. Proceeding down the formidable catalogue, 
we discover that the ' Marine Bureau' (in common with the Asso- 
ciated Press) is under the charge of Commodore John T. Hall, who 
is assisted by twelve agents and reporters. Besides these, the Tri- 
bune has a special 'Ship News Editor.' The 'Telegraphic Bureau* 
(also in common with the Associated Press) employs one general 
agent and two subordinates, (one at Liverpool and one at Halifax,^ 
and fifty reporters in various parts of the country. The number of 
regular and paid correspondents is thirty-eight — eighteen foreign, 
twenty home. The remaining force of the Tribune, as we are in- 
formed by the Directory, is, Thos. M'Elrath, cliief of tiie depart- 
ment of publication, assisted by eight clerks ; Thos. N. Rooker, fore- 
man of the composing-room, with eight assistant-foremen (three by 
day, five by night), thirty-eight regular compositors, and twenty- 
five substitutes; George Hall, foreman of the press-room, with three 
assistants, sixteen feeders, twenty-five folders, three wrapper- writers, 
and three boys. Besides these, there are four proof-readers, and a 
number of miscellaneous individuals. It thus appears that the 
whole number of persons employed upon the paper is about two 
hundred and twenty, of whom about one hundred and thirty devote 
to it their whole time. The Directory further informs us that the 
proprietors of the establishment are sixteen in number — namely, 
seven editors, the publisher, four clerks, the foreman of the compos- 



A GLANCE AT THE i'APER. ^^^ 

ing toom, the foreman of the press-room, one compositor and one 
press-man. 

Except for a few hours on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morn- 
ing, tlie work of a daily paper never entirely ceases ; but, at this 
liour of the da}-, between six and seven o'clock, it does nearly 
cease. The editors are still, it is to be hoped, asleep. The compos- 
itors have been in bed for two hours or more. The pressmen of 
the night are going home, and those of the day have not arrived. 
The carriers have gone their rounds. The youngest clerks have not 
yet appeared in the office. All but the slowest of the newsboys 
have got their supply of papers, and are making the streets and fer- 
ries vocal, or vociferous, with their well-known names. There is a 
general lull ; and while that lull continues, we shall lose nothing by 
going to breakfast. 

Part of which is the New Yoik Tribune ; and we may linger 
over it a little longer than usual tliis morning. 

It does not look like it, but it is a fact, as any one moderately en- 
dowed with arithmetic can easily ascertain, that one number of the 
Tribune, if it were printed in the form of a book, with libei-al type 
and spacing, would make a duodecimo volume of four hundred 
pages — a volume, in fact, not much less in magnitude than the one 
■which the reader has, at this moment, the singular hapitiness of 
perusing. Each number is the result of, at least, two hundred days' 
work, or the work of two hundred men for one day ; and it is sold 
(to carriers and newsboys) for one cent and a half. Lucifer matches, 
at forty-four cents for a hundred and forty-four boxes, are supposed, 
and justly, to be a miracle of cheapness. Pins are cheap, consider- 
ing; and so are steel pens. But the cheapest thing yet realized un- 
der the s-un is the New York Tribune. 

The number for this morning contains six hundred and forty-one 
separate articles — from two-line advertisements to two-column es- 
says — of which five hundred and ten are advertisements, the re- 
mainder, one hundred and thirty-one, belonging to the various de- 
partments of reading matter. The reading matter, however, occu- 
pies about one half of the whole sjjace — nearly four of the eight 
broad pages, nearly twenty-four of the forty-eight columns. The 
articles and paragraphs which must have been written for tliis num- 
ber, yesterday, or very recently, iu the office or at the editors' resi- 



364 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

dences, fill thirteen columns, equal to a hundred pages of foolscap^ 
or eight} such pages as this. There are five columns of telegraphic 
intelligence, which is, porhaps, two columns above the average. 
There are twelve letters from ' our own' and voluntary correspond- 
ents, of which five are from foreign countries There have been aa 
many as thirty letters in one number of the Tribune ; there are sel- 
dom less than ten. 

What has the Tribune of this morning to say to us ? Let us see. 

It is often asked, who reads advertisements ? and the question is 
often inconsiderately answered, 'Nobody.' But, idle reader, if you 
were in search of a boarding-house this morning, these two columns 
of advertisements, headed 'Board and Rooms,' would be read by you 
with the liveliest interest; and so, in other circumstances, would 
those which reveal a hundred and fifty ' Wants,' twenty-two places 
3f amusement, twenty-seven new publications, forty-two schools, 
md thirteen establishments where the best pianos in existence are 
made. If you had come into the possession of a fortune yesterday, 
this column of bank-dividend announcements would not be passed 
"by with indifi'erence. And if you were the middle-aged gentleman 
who advertises his desire to open a correspondence with a young 
lady (all communications post-paid and the strictest secresy ob- 
eerved), you might peruse with anxiety these seven advertisements 
of hair-dye, each of which is either infallible, unapproachable, or 
the acknowledged best. And the eye of the 'young lady' who ad- 
dresses you a post-paid communication in reply, informing you 
where an interview may be had, would perhaps rest for a moment 
upon the description of the new Baby -Walker, with some compla- 
cency. If the negotiation were successful, it were difficult to say 
what column of advertisements would not^ in its turn, become of 
the highest interest to one or the other, or both of you. In truth, 
every one reads the advertisements which concern them. 

The wonders of the telegraph are not novel, and, therefore, they 
seem wonderful no longer. We glance up and down the columns 
of telegraphic intelligence, and read without the slightest emotion, 
dispatches from Michigan, Halifax, Washington, Baltimore, Cincin- 
nati, Boston, Cleveland, St. Louis, New Orleans, and a dozen places 
nearer the city, some of which give us news of events that had not 
ocurred when w© went to bed last night. The telegraphic news of 



THE DEPARTMENTS OF THE PAPER. 365 

this morning has run along four thousand seven hundred and fifty 
miles of wire, and its transmission, at the published rates, must have 
cost between two and three hundred dollars. On one occasion, re- 
cently, the steamer arrived at Halifax at half-past eleven in tlie eve- 
ning, and tte substance of her news was contained in the New York 
papers the next morning, and probably in the papers of New Or- 
leans. A debate which concludes in Washington at midnight, is read 
in Fiftieth street. New York, six hours after. But these are stale 
marvels, and they are received by us entirely as a matter of course. 

The City department of the paper, conducted with uncommou 
efficiency by Mr. Ottarson, gives us this morning, in sufficient detail, 
the proceedings of a 'Demonstration' at Tammany Hall — of a meet- 
ing of the Bible Union — a session of the committee investigating 
the affdrs of Columbia college — a meeting to devise measures for 
the improvement of the colored population — a temperance 'Demon- 
stration'— a session of the Board of Aldermen — a meeting of the 
commissioners of emigration — and one of the commissioners of ex- 
cise. A trial for murder is reported; the particulars of seven fires 
are stated ; the performance of the opera is noticed; the progress of 
the 'State Fair' is chronicled, and there are thirteen ' city items.' 
And what is most surprising is, that seven-tenths of the city mat- 
ter must have been prepared in the evening, for most of the events 
narrated did not occur till after dark. 

The Law Intelligence includes brief notices of the transactions of 
five courts. The Commercial Intelligence gives minute informa- 
tion respecting the demand for, the supply of, the price, and the re- 
cent sales, of twenty-one leading articles of trade. The Marine 
Journal takes note of the sailing and arrival of two hundred and 
seven vessels, with the name of the captain, owners and consign- 
ees. This is, in truth, the most astonishing department of a daily 
paper. Arranged under the heads of " Cleared," " Arrived," "Dis- 
asters," " To mariners," " Spoken," " Whalers," " Foreign Ports," 
"Domestic Ports," "Passengers sailed," "Passengers arrived," it 
presents daily a mass and a variety of facts, which do not astound 
us, only because we see the wonder daily repeated. Nor is .th« 
shipping intelligence a mere catalogue of names, places and figures. 
Witness these sentences cut almost at random from the dense col- 
nmns of small type in which the aflfairs of the sea are printed : 



366 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

•' Bark Gen. Jone?, (of Boston.) Hodgden, London 47 dn ys, chalk to E. S. 
Belknap & Sons. Aug. 14, lat. 50° 11', Ion. 9° 20', spoke ship Merensa, of Bos- 
ton, 19 days from Enstport for London. Aug. 19, signalized a ship showing 
Nos. 55, 31, steering E. Aug. 20, signalized ship Isaac Allerton, of New York. 
Sept. 1, spoke Br. Emerald, and supplied her with some provisions. Sept. 13, 
lat. 43*^ 36', Ion. 49° 54', passed a number of empty barrels and broken pieces of 
oars. Sept. 13, lat 43°, long 50° 40', while lying to in a gale, passed a vessel's 
spars and broken pieces of bulwarks, painted black and white ; supposed the 
spars to be a ship's topmasts. Sept. 19, lat. 41° 14', Ion 56°, signalized a bark 
showing a red signal with a white spot in center." 

As no one not interested in marine affairs ever bestows a glance 
upon this part of his daily paper, these condensed tragedies of the 
sea will be novel to the general reader. To compile the ship-news 
of this single morning, the log-books of twenty-seven vessels must 
}jave been examined, and information obtained by letter, telegraph, 
or exchange papers, from ninety-three sea-port towns, of which thir- 
ty-one are in foreign countries. Copied here, it would fill thirty-five 
pages, and every line of it was procured yesterday. 

The money article of the Tribune, to those who have any money, 
is highly interesting. It chronicles, to-day,, the sales of stocks, the 
price of exchange and freight, the arrivals and departures of gold, 
the condition of the sub-treasury, the state of the coal-trade and 
other mining interests, and ends with gossip and argument about 
the Schuyler frauds. There is a vast amount of labor condensed 
in the two columns which the money article usually occupies. 

The Tribune, from the beginning of its career, has kept a vigilant 
eye upon passing literature. Its judgments have great weight with 
the reading public. They are always pronounced with, at least, an 
air of deliberation. They are always able, generally just, occasion- 
ally cruel, more frequently too kind. In this department, taking 
into account the quantity of information given — both of home and 
foreign literature, of books published and of books to be published 
— and the talent and knowledge displayed in its notices and reviews, 
the superiority of the Tribune to any existing daily paper is simply 
undeniable. Articles occasionally appear in the London journals, 
written after every other paper has expressed its judgment, written 
at ample leisure and by men pre-eminent in the one branch of let- 
ters to which the reviewed book belongs, which are superior to the 
reviews of the Tribune. It is the literary deparlmerU of the [)aper. 



EDITORIAL ARTICLES. 367 

for which superiority is here asserted. To-day, it happens, that the 
paper contains nothing literary. In a daily paper, news has the 
precedence of everything, and a review of an epic greater than 
Paradise Lost might be crowded out by the report of an election 
brawl in the Sixth Ward. Thus, a poor author is often kept in trem- 
bling suspense for days, or even weeks, waiting for the review 
which he erroneously thinks will make or mar him. 

Like People, like Priest, says the old maxim ; which we maj; 
amend by saying. Like Editor, like Correspondent. From tliese 
'Letters from the People,' we infer, that when a man has something 
to say to the public, of a reformatory or humanitary nature, lie h 
prone to indite an epistle 'to the Editor of the New York Tribune,' 
who, on his part, in tenderness to tlie public, is exceedingly prone 
to consign it to the basket of oblivion. A good many of these let- 
ters, however, escape into print — to-day, four, on some days a dozen. 
The London letters of the Tribune are written in London, the Paria 
letters in Paris, the Timbuctoo letters in Timbuctoo. This is strange, 
but true. 

In its editorial department, the Tribune has two advantages over 
most of its contemporaries. In the first place, it has an object of 
attack, the slave power; and secondly, by a long course of warftire, 
it has won the conceded privilege of being sincere. Any one who 
has had to do with the press, is aware, that articles in newspapers 
are of two kinds, namely, those which are w/itten for a 2>'^fpose 
not avowed, and those wliich are written spontaneously, from the 
impulse and convictions of the writer's own mind. And any one 
who has written articles of both descriptions is aware, further, that a 
man who is writing with perfect sincerity, writing with a pure de- 
sire to move, interest, or convince, writes tetter^ than when the 
necessities of his vocation compel him to grind the axe for a party, 
or an individual. There is more or less of axe-grinding done in 
every newspaper oflice in the world ; and a perfectly independent 
newspaper never existed. Take, for example, the London Times, 
which is claimed to be the most incorruptible of journals. The 
writers for the Times are trammeled, first, by the immense position 
of the paper, which give* to its leading articles a possible infliienca 
upon the affairs <^^ the world. The aim of the writer is to expre'=<s, 
not himself, but England; as the Times is, in other countries, the 



368 DAT AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

recognized voice of the British Empire ; and it is this which ren- 
ders raucli of the writing in \;be Times as safe, as vague, and as 
pointless, as a diplomatist's dispatch. The Times is furtlier tram 
meled by the business necessity of keeping on terms with those 
who have it in their power to give and withhold important intelli- 
gence. And, still further, by the fact, that general England^ whom 
it addresses, is not up to the liberality of the age — in which (he 
leading minds alone fully participate. Thus, it happens, that the 
articles in a paper like The Leader, which reaches only the liberal 
class, are often more pointed, more vigorous, more interesting, than 
those of the Times, though the resources of the Leader are extremely 
limited, and the Times can have its pick of the wit, talent, and learn- 
ing of the empire. When a man writes with perfect freedom, then, 
and only then, he writes his hest. "Without claiming for the Tri- 
bune a perfect innocence of axe-grinding, it may with truth be said, 
that the power of its leading editorial articles is vastly increased by 
the fact, that those who write them, do so with as near an approach 
to perfect freedom, i. e. sincerity, as the nature of newspaper- writ- 
ing, at present, admits of. "What it gains, too, in spirit and interest 
by having the preposterous inaptitude of the Southern press to rid- 
icule, and the horrors of Southern brutality to denounce, is suffi- 
ciently known. 

But it is time we returned to the office. It is ten o'clock in the 
morning. The clerks in the office are at their posts, receiving ad- 
vertisements, recording them, entering the names of new subscrib- 
ers received by the morning's mail, of which on some mornings of 
the year there are hundreds. It is a busy scene. 

Up the dismal stairs to a dingy door in the third story, upon 
which we read, " Editorial Rooms of the New York Tribune. H. 
Greeley." We ought not to be allowed to enter, but we are, and 
we do ; no one hinders us, or even notices our entrance. First, a 
narrow passage, with two small rooms on the left, whence, later in 
the day, the rapid hum of proof-reading issues unceasingly, one man 
reading the 'copy' aloud, another having his eyes fixed upon the slip 
of proof. One may insert his visage into the square aperture in the 
doors of these minute apartments, and gaze upon the performance 
with persistent impertinence ; but the proof-reading goes on, like a 
machine. At this hour, however, these rooms contain no one. A 



THE EDITORIAL ROOMS. 369 

few steps, and the principal Editorial Room is before us. It is a 
long, narrow apartment, with desks for tho principal editors along 
the sides, with shelves well-loaded with books and manuscripts, a 
great heap of exchange papers in the midst, and a file of the Tri- 
bune on a broad desk, slanting from the wall. Everything is in 
real order, but apparent confusion, and the whole is ' blended in a 
common element of dust.' Nothing particular appears to be going 
on. Two or three gentlemen are looking over the papers ; but the 
desks are all vacant, and each has upon its lid a pile of letters and 
papers awaiting the arrival of him to whose department they be- 
long. One desk presents an array of new publications that might 
well appal the most industrious critic — twenty -four new books, 
seven magazines, nine piimphlets, and two new papers, all expect- 
ing a ' first-rate notice.' At the right, we observe another and 
smaller room, with a green carpet, two desks, a sofa, and a large 
book-case, filled with books of reference. This is the sanctum sano- 
torum. The desk near the window, that looks out upon the green 
Park, the white City Hall in. the midst thereof, and the lines of 
moving life that bound the same, is the desk of the Editor-in-Chief. 
It presents confusion merely. The shelves are heaped with manu- 
scripts, books, and pamphlets ; its lid is covered with clippings from 
newspapers, each containing something supposed by the assiduous 
exchange-reader to be of special interest to the Editor; and over 
all, on the highest shelf, near the ceiling, stands a large bronze bust 
of Henry Clay, wearing a crown of dust. The other desk, near the 
door, belongs to the second iu command. It is in perfect order. 
A heap of foreign letters, covered with stamps and post-marks, 
awaits his coming. The row of huge, musty volumes along the 
floor against one of the walls of the room, is a complete file of tho 
Tribune, with some odd volumes of the New Yorker and Log 
Ca jin. 

An hour later. One by one the editors arrive. Solon Robinson, 
looking, with his flowing white beard and healthy countenance, like 
a good-humored Prophet Isaiah, or a High Priest in undress, has 
dropped into his corner, and is compiling, from letters and newspa- 
pers, a column of paragraphs touching the effect of the drouth 
upon the potato crop. Bayard Taylor is reading a paper in tho 

American attitude. His countenance has quite lost tho Nubian 
24 



370 DAY AND NIGHT IN THE IRIBUNE OFFICE. 

bronze with wliich it darkened on tlie banks of the White 'N'ile, as 
well as the Japanning which his last excursion gave it. Pale, defi- 
cate-featnred, with a curling beard and subdued moustache, slight 
in figure, and dressed with care, he has as little the aspect of an ad 
venturous traveler, and as much the air of a nice young gentleman, 
as can be imagined. He may read in peace, for he is not now one 
of the * hack-horses', of the daily press. The tall, pale, inten.se- 
looking gentleman who is slowly pacing the carpet of the inner 
sanctum is Mr. A'/illiam H Fry, the composer of Leonora. At this 
moment he is thinking out thunder for to^ morrow's Tribune. Wil- 
liam Henry Fry is one of the noblest fellows alive — a hater ot 
meanness and wrong, a lover of man and right, with a power of 
expression equal to the intensity of his hate and the enthusiasm of 
his love. There is more merit in his little finger than in a whole 
mass-meeting of Douglass-senators; and from any but a grog-ruled 
city he would have been sent to Congress long ago; but perhaps, 
as Otliello remarks, 'it is better as it is.' Mr. Ripley, who came in 
a few minutes ago, and sat down before that marslialed array of 
books and magazines, might be described in the language of Mr. 
Weller the elder, as ' a stout gentleinan of eight and forty.' He is 
in for a long day's work apparently, and has taken off his coat. 
Luckily for authors, Mr. Ripley is a gentleman of sound digestion 
and indomitable good humor, who enjoys life and helps others en- 
joy it, and believes that anger and hatred are seldom proper, and 
never ' pay.' He examines each book, we observe, with care. 
Without ever being in a hurry, he gets through an amazing quan- 
tity of work ; and all he does shows the touch and finish of the 
practical hand. Mr. Dana enters with a quick, decided step, goes 
stj-aiglit to his desk in the green-carpeted sanctum sanctorum, and 
is soon lost in the perusal of ' Karl Marx,' or ' An American Wo- 
man in Paris.' In figure, face, and flowing beard, he looks enough 
like Louis Kossuth to be his cousin, if not his brother. Mr. Dana, 
as befits his place, is a gentleman of peremptory habits. It is his 
office to decide ; and, as he is called upon to perff rm the act of de- 
cision a hundred times a day, he has acquired t.ie power both of 
deciding with despatch and of announcing his decision with civil 
brevity, If you desire a plain answer to a plain question, Charles 
A. Dana is the gentleman who can accommodate you. He is an 



THE EDITORIAL CORPS. 371 

able and, in description, a brilliant writer ; a good speaker ; fond 
and proud of his profession ; indefotigable in the discharge of it3 
duties ; when out of harness, agreeable as a companion ; in harness, 
a man not to be interrupted, Mr. Ottarson, the city editor, has not 
yet made h's appearance ; he did not leave the office last night till 
three hours after midnight. Before he left, however, he prepared 
a list of things to be reported and described to-day, writing oppo- 
site each expected occurrence the name of tlie man whom he wished 
to attend to it. The reporters come to the office in the morning, 
and from this list ascertain what special duty is expected of them, 
Mr. Ottarson rose from the ranks. He has been everything in a 
newspaper office, from devil to editor. He is one of the busiest of 
men, and fills the most difficult post in the establishment with great 
ability. That elegant and rather distingue gentleman with the 
small, black, Albert moustache, who is writing at the desk over 
there in the corner, is the commercial editor, the writer of the 
money article — Mr. George M. Snow. We should have taken him 
for anything but a commercial gentlemen. Mr. Pike, the 'J. S. P.* 
of former Washington correspondence, now a writer on political 
subjects, is not present ; nor are other members of the corps. 

Between twelve and one, Mr. Greeley comes in, with his pockets 
full of papers, and a bundle under his arm. His first act is to dis- 
patch his special aid-de-sanctum on various errands, such as to de- 
liver notes, letters and messages, to procure seeds or implements 
for the farm, et cetera. Then, perhaps, he will comment on the 
morning's paper, dwelling with pertinacious emphasis upon its de- 
fects, hard to be convinced that an alleged fault was unavoidable. 
After two or three amusing colloquies of this nature, he niakes 
his way to the sanctum, where, usually, several people are waiting 
to see him. He takes his seat at his desk and begins to examine 
the heap of notes, letters, newspapers and clippings, with which it 
is covered, while one after another of his visitors states his bubi- 
ness. One is an exile who wants advice, or a loan, or an advertise- 
ment inserted gratis ; he does not get the loan, for Mr. Greeley 
long ago shut down the door upon miscellaneous borrowers and 
beggars. Another visitor has an invention which he wishes par- 
agraphed into celebrity. Another is one of the lecture-committee 
of a country Lyceum, and wants our editor to ' come out and giva 



372 DAT AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

US a lecture tliis winter.' Another is a country clergyman who had 
called to say how much he likes the seini-weekly Tribune, and to 
gratify his curiosity by speaking with the editor face to face. Grad- 
ually the throng diminishes and the pile of papers is reduced. By 
three or four o'clock, this preliminary botheration is disposed ot^ 
and Mr. Greeley goes to dinner. 

Meanwhile, all the departments of the establishment have beep 
in a state of activity. It is Thursday, the day of the Weekly Tn 
bune, the inside of which began to be printed at seven in the morn- 
ing. Before the day closes, the whole edition, one hundred and 
sixteen thousand, forty-eight cart-loads, will have been printed, 
folded, wrapped, bundled, bagged, and carried to the post-office. 
The press-room on Thursdays does its utmost, and presents a scene 
of bustle and movement 'easier imagined than described.' No 
small amount of work, too, is done in the office of publication. 
To-day, as we ascertain, two hundred and thirteen business letters 
were received, containing, among other things less interesting, 
eleven hundred and seventy-two dollars, and four hundred and ten 
new or renewed subscriptions, each of which has been recorded 
and placed upon the wrapper- wi-iter's books. The largest sum 
ever received by one mail was eighteen hundred dollars. The 
weekly expenditures of the concern average about six thousand 
two hundred dollars, of which sum four thousand is for paper. 
During the six dull months of the year, the receipts and expendi- 
tures are about equal ; in the active months the receipts exceed 
the expenditures. 

It is nine o'clock in the evening. Gas has resumed. The clank 
of the press has ceased, and the basement is dimly lighted. The 
clerks, who have been so busy all day, have gone home, and the 
night-clerk, whom we saw this morning in his press-room pulpit, ia 
now behind the counter of the office receiving advertisements. 
Night-work agi'ees with him, apparently, for he is robust, ruddy 
and smiling. Aloft in the composing room, thirty-eight men are 
setting type, silently and fast. No sound is heard but the click of 
the type, or the voice, now and then, of a foreman, or the noise of 
of the copy-box rattling up the wooden pipe from the editor's room 
below, or a muffled grunt from the tin tube by which the different 
rooms hold converse with one another, or the bell which calls for 



THE COMPOSING ROOM IN THE EVENING. 373 

the application of an ear to the mouth of that tube. The place ia 
warm, close, light, and still. Whether it is necessarily detrimental 
tt) a compositor's health to work from eight to ten hours every night 
in such an atmosphere, in such a light, is still, it appears, a ques- 
tion. Mr. Greeley thinks it is not. The compositors think it is, 
and seldom feel able to work more than four nights a week, filling 
their places on the other nights from the list of substitutes, or in 
printer's language ' subs.' Compositors say, that sleep in the day 
time is a very dijQferent thing from sleep at night, particularly in 
summer, when to create an artificial night is to exclude the needful 
air. They say that they never get perfectly used to the reversion 
of nature's order; and often, after a night of drowsiness so extreme 
that they would give the world if they could sink down upon the 
floor and sleep, they go to bed at length, and find that ofi*ended 
Morpheus has taken his flight, and left their eye-lids glued to their 
brows; and they cannot close them before the inexorable hour ar- 
rives that summons them to work again. In the middle of the 
room the principal night-foreman is already ' making up' the out- 
side forms of to-morrow's paper, four in number, each a section of 
a cylinder, with rims of polished iron, and type of copper face. It 
is slow work, and a moment's inattention might produce results 
more ridiculous than cross-readings. 

The editorial rooms, too, have become intense. Seven desks are 
occupied with silent writers, most of them in the Tribune uniform— 
shirt-sleeves and moustache. The night-reader is looking over the* 
papers last arrived, with scissors ready for any paragraph of news 
that catches his eye. An editor occasionally goes to the copy -box, 
places in it a page or two of the article he is writing, and rings the 
bell; the box slides up to the composing-room, and the pages are in 
type and corrected before the article is finished. Such articles are 
those which are prompted by the event of the hour; others are 
more deliberately written ; some are weeks in preparation ; and of 
Some the keel is laid months before they are launched upon the pub- 
lic mind. The Editor-in-Chief is at his desk writing in a singular 
attitude, the desk on a level with his nose, and the writer sitting 
bolt upright. He writes rapidly, with scarcely a pause for thought, 
and not once in a page makes ar erasure. The foolscap leaves fly 
from under his pen at the rate /f one in fifteen minutes. He does 



874 DAT AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUls E OFFICE. 

most of t1ie thinking before he begins to write, and produces matter 
about as fast as a swift copyist can copy. Yet he leaves nothing for 
the compositor to guess at, and if he makes an alteration in the proof; 
he is careful to do it in such a way that the printer loses no time in 
'overrunning;' that is, he inserts as many words as he erases. Not 
unfrequently he bounds up into the composing-room, and makes a 
correction or adds a sentence with his own hand. He is not patient 
under the infliction of an error ; and he expects men to understand 
his wishes by intuition; and when they do not^ but interpret his 
half-expressed orders in a way exactly contrary to his intention, a 
scene is likely to ensue. 

And so they write and read in the editorial rooms of the Tribune 
for some hours. Occasionally a City Reporter comes in with his 
budget of intelligence, or his short-hand notes, and sits down at a 
desk to arrange or write them out. Telegraphic messages arrive 
from the agent of the Associated Press, or from 'our own corre- 
spondent.' Mr. Dana glances over them, sends them aloft, and, if 
they are important, indites a paragraph calling attention to the fact. 
That omnipresent creature, the down town apple-woman, whom no 
labyrinth puzzles, no extent of stairs fatigues, no presence overawes, 
enters, and thrusts her basket in deliberate succession under each 
editorial nose. Some of the corps, deep in the affairs of the nation, 
pause in their writing, gaze at the woman in utter abstraction, slow- 
ly come to a sense of her errand, shake their heads, and resume 
their work. Others hurriedly buy an apple, and taking one prodig- 
ious bite, lay it aside and forget it. A band of music is heard in 
the street; it is a target-excursion returning late from Hoboken ; it 
passes the oflice and gives it three cheers; the city men go to the win- 
dows; the rest write on unconscious of the honor that has beea 
done them ; the Tribune returns the salute by a paragraph. 

Midnight. The strain is off. Mr. Greeley finished his work about 
eleven, chatted a while with Mr. Dana, and went home. Mr. Dana 
has received from the foreman the list of the articles in type, the 
articles now in hand, and the articles expected ; he has designated 
those whicli must go in ;, those which it is highly desirable should 
go in, and those w^hich will 'keep.' He has also marked the order 
in which the articles are to appear; and, having performed this last 
duty, he returns the list to the compositor, puts on his coat and de- 



MIDNIGHT. 875» 

parts. Mr. Fry is on the last page of his critique of this evening's 
Grisi, vvliich he executes with steam-engine rapidity, and sends up 
without reading. He lingers awliile, and then strolls off up town. 
Mr. Ottarson is still busy, as reporters continually arrive with items 
of news, which he iiastily examines, and consigns either to the bas- 
ket under his desk, or to the copy-box. The first phalanx of com- 
positors is dismissed, and they come thundering down the dark stairs, 
putting on their coats as they descend. The foreman is absorbed in 
making up the inside forms, as he has just sent those of the outsido 
below, and the distant clanking of tlie press announces thut they 
have begun to be printed. We descend, and find the sheets coming 
off the press at the rate of a hundred and sixty a minute. The en- 
gine-man is commodiously seated on an inverted basket, under a 
gas-jet, reading the outside of the morning's paper, and tlie chief of 
the press-room is scanning a sheet to see if the impression is perfect. 
Tlie gigantic press has six moutbs, and six men are feeding him with 
white paper, slipping in the sheets uith tlie easy knack acquired by 
long practice. It looks a simple matter, this ' feeding ;' but if a new 
hand were to attempt it, the iron maw of the monster would be 
instantly choked, and his whole system disarranged. For he is as 
delicate as he is strong; the little finger of a child can start and 
stop him, moderate his pace, or quicken it to the snapping of his 
sinews. 

Tln-ee o'clock in the morning Mr. Ottarson is in trouble. Tho 
outside of the paper is printed, the inside forms are ready to be low- 
ered away to the basement, and the press-men are impatiently wait- 
ing the signal to receive it. Tlie pulpit of the night clerk is ready 
for his reception, the spacious folding- table is cleared, and two car- 
riers have already arrived. All the compositors except the last 
phalanx have gone home ; and they have corrected the last proof, 
and desire nothing so much as to be allowed to depart. But an 
English steamer is overdue, and a telegraphic dispatch from the 
agent of tlie Associated Press at Sandy Hook, who has been all night 
in his yacht cruising for the news, is anxiously expected. It does 
not come. The steamer (as we afterwards ascertain) has arrived, 
but the captain churlishly refused to throw on board the yacht tho 
customary newspaper. Mr. Ottarson fancies he hears a gun. A 
moment after he is positive he hears another. He has five men of 



376 15 AY AND NIGHT IN THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 

his corps within call, and he sends them flying ! One goes to the 
Astor House to see if tTi^y have heard of the steamer's arrival ; an- 
other to the oflSces of the Times and Herald, on the same errand; 
others to Jersey City, to be ready in case the steamer reaches her 
■wharf in time. It is ascertained, about half-past three, that the 
steamer is coming up the bay, and that her news cannot possibly be 
procured before five; and so, Mr. Ottarson, having first ascertained 
that the other morning papers have given up the hope of the news 
for their first editions, goes to press in despair, and home in ill humor. 
In a few minutes, the forms are lowered to the basement^ wheeled 
to the side of the press, and hoisted to their places on the press by 
a crank. The feeders take their stands, the foreman causes the 
press to make one revolution, examines a sheet, pronounces it all 
right, sets the press in motion at a rattling rate, and nothing remains 
to be done except to print off thirty thousand copies and distribute 
them. 

The last scene of all is a busy one indeed. The press-room is all 
alive with carriers, news-men and folding-boys, each of whom is in 
a fever of hurry. Four or five boys are carrying the papers in back- 
loads from the press to the clerk, and to the mailing tables. The 
carriers receive their papers in the order of the comparative dis- 
tance of their districts from the office. No money passes between 
them and the clerk. They come to the office every afternoon, ex- 
amine the book of subscribers, note the changes ordered in their 
respective routes, pay for the number of papers they will require on 
the following morning, and receive a ticket entitling them to receive 
the designated number. The number of papers distributed by one 
carrier varies from two hundred and fifty to five hundred. Some 
of the carriers, however, are assisted by boys As a carrier gains 
a weekly profit of three cents on each subscriber, one who delivers 
five hundred papers has an income of fifteen dollars a week ; and it 
is well earned. Most of the small news-men in town, country, and 
railroad-car, are supplied with their papers by a wholesale firm, who 
deliver tiiem at a slight increase of price over the first cost. The 
firm alluded to purchases from four to five thousand copies of the 
Tribune every morning. 

By five o'clock, usually, the morning edition has been printed 
off, the carriers supplied, the early mail dispatched, and the bundles 



THE CARRIERS. 377 

for adjacent towns rnarle up. Again there is a lull in the activity 
of the Tribune building, and, sleepily, we bend our steps homeward. 

There is something extremely pleasing in the spectacle afforded 
by a large number of strong men co-operating in cheerful activity, 
by which they at once secure their own career, and render an im- 
portant service to the public. Such a spectacle the Tribune build-" 
ing presents. At present men show to best advantage when they 
are at work ; we have not yet learned to sport with grace and un- 
mixed benefit; and still further are we from that stage of develop- 
ment where work and play become one. But the Tribune building 
is a very cheerful place. No one is oppressed or degraded ; and, 
by the minute subdivision of labor in all departments, there is sel- 
dom any occasion for hurry or excessive exertion. The distinctions 
which there exist between one man and another, are not artificial, 
but natural and necessary ; foreman and editor, oflSce-boy and head 
clerk, if they converse together at all, converse as friends and 
equals ; and tiie posts of honor are posts of honor, only because they 
are posts of difficulty. In a word, the republicanism of the Con- 
tinent has come to a focus at the corner of Nassau and Spruce- 
streets. There it has its nearest approach to practical realization; 
thence proceeds its strongest expression. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. 

Voyage to Europe— Visit to the exhibition— At the tomb of Napoleon— Two days in the 
debtors' prison — In London again — Comments of the editor on men and things. 

In the year 1855, which was that of the first Paris Exhibition, 
Mr. G-reeley again enjoyed a few weeks' holiday in Europe. The 
voyage, however, was anything but enjoyment. " I have expressed," 
he says, " my own opinion of the sea and its behavior before, and 
do not care to reiterate it. I suffered far less intensely this time, 
and gratefully acknowledge the kind Providence which preserved 
us from the perils and afflictions by which others have been visited 
But to me ' a life on the ocean wave ' is still surcharged with misery, 
and a steamship on rocking billows the most intolerable prison 
wherewith man's follies or sins are visited. I think I could just 
endure the compound stench of grease and steam which ' ascend- 
eth for ever and ever' on board these fire-ships ; I might even bear 
the addition to my agonies which the damp, chilly breeze (when it 
happens not to be a gale) never fails to induce ; I might come in 
time to grapple with and throttle the demon Sea-sickness, remorse- 
less as he is ; but when to these are added the fumes arising from 
the incessant cookery required for three or four hundred human 
beings, all huddled within a space two hundred feet long by some 
twenty-five wide, I am compelled to surrender. There certainly 
can be fabricated nowhere else on earth a jumble of smells so in- 
tolerably nauseous and sickening." 

In his first letter to the Tribune, from which the above is taken, 
he gives some particulars of the voyage which are interesting : — 

THE ROUTINE ON SHIPBOARD. 

" The day opens at this season about sunrise with a concert of 
scrubbing implements on the decks, and the first passengers who 
rise find the sailors still intent on the purifying process. Occasion- 
ally brass hand-railings, &c., are rubbed, and no j^ains spared gen- 
378 



THE ROUTINE ON SHIPBOARD. 379 

erally to keep the vessel as clean as possible. One by one, the 
passengers stumble up from their state-rooms, and gather for 
warmth around the great smoke-pipe amidships, or begin walk- 
ing back and forth the hurricane or quarter-deck. When the 
wind is very high, or the spray particularly searching, this ia 
abandoned for one or both of the open passages on the main deck, 
on either side of the dining-room ; when the rain pours fiercely, all 
out-door walking is forborne, or only prosecuted by the stubborn 
under the protection of an umbrella. A loud bell at eight sum- 
mons the sluggish to prepare for breakfast, which is served half an 
hour later ; from one third to two thirds of the passengers, accord- 
ing to the state of the weather and the waves, entering an appear- 
ance at the breakfast-table. Some of the residue are served in 
their berths ; some have a plate on deck ; other some are too sick 
to eat at all 

" From breakfast, the active adjourn to the decks, there to resume 
the monotonous tramp, tramp, or gather in knots around the great 
chimney, where heat is ever abundant ; many go forward to smoke, 
and some, alas ! smoke without going forward, to the aggravated 
discomposure of uneasy stomachs ; for the sick are crouching in 
corners, or lounging on settees, or propped up by the railing in 
front of cushions, or trying to walk by the help of a friendly arm, 
or attempting any other dodge which promises alleviation, if not 
temporary obhvion, of their woes. A few try to read ; still fewer 
to write ; but neither of these employments can be recommended 
to the sick, and they do not seem to recommend themselves very 
strongly to the great body of the well. As soon as the tables are 
partly cleared, some of the more inveterate card-players recom- 
mence their various games ; two or three pairs sit down to chess, 
drafts, or backgammon. Noon brings luncheon, which accommo- 
dates a class who do not rise in season for breakfast ; four o'clock 
summons to dinner, over which the comfortable manage to kill an 
hour or more, not ineffectively ; next follows the more general par- 
ade and promenade on the upper deck, which the quality now con- 
descend to honor by their patronage and co-operation ; and at half 
past seven the bell sounds for tea, and thus the evening is fairly 
begun. 

Tea being speedily despatched and the tables cleared, a goodly 
company gather in the dining-saloon, and sit down to cheerful 



380 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. 

conversation, to the various sedentary games, to reading, &c. Tlie 
number of whist-players is very much larger than by day, for the 
salt spray and damp night-winds on decks are neither pleasant 
nor wholesome. Thus acquaintances are formed or ripened, sym- 
pathies developed, and day after day sees the ice which had sepa- 
rated the company of recent strangers gradually dissolving and dis- 
appearing. By nine o'clock the more hardy or reckless begin to 
order supper, — usually a Welsh rabbit (melted cheese on toasted 
bread), eggs, and toast, a grilled fowl, pickled salmon, or something 
of the kind. Lest such a refection late at night might over-tax 
the stomach, it is usual to wash it down with a tumbler of hot 
whiskey punch, a glass of cherry bounce, brandy and water, a 
tumbler or two of champagne, a bottle of ale, or something of the 
sort. I was a little surprised to see delicate ladies, who had clung 
to their berths through the first two or three days of the voyage, 
soon after take their places at the evening table and partake freely 
of the edibles and potables above named. When they appeared 
next day, — which was not till long after breakfast had vanished, 
— I inquired anxiously the state of their health respectively, and 
was assured that it had been sensibly improved by the rabbits 
and punches aforesaid. On the third morning of my inquiries, 
however, I was informed by a candid male friend, who had freely 
indulged with the rest, that he had not slept well the last night; 
* The rabbit kicked me,' was his way of stating the fact and hint- 
ing the cause. Others were not all so candid ; but suppers and 
grog were not half so popular toward the end of the voyage as 
they were at the beginning." 

SUNDAY AT SEA. 

"I liked to hear the bell ring for worship on Sunday morning, and 
all the seamen not on duty thereupon march in, in their clean, 
smart blue jackets, prayer-b#ok in hand, and take their seats in 
the dining-saloon. Soon the passengers also were assembled, and 
the captain read appropriately the morning service of the Church 
of England, a majority of the assemblage uniting in the responses 
audibly, and nearly all, I presume, in spirit. Then a Presbyterian 
clergyman, who was one of the passengers, preached an off-hand 
sermon with great energy and zeal, commencing and closing with 
prayer. I think a liturgy never commends itself more forcibly 



MR GREELEY IS SHAVED. 3SX 

than on such occasions as this ; and I would suggest that each de- 
nomination should provide itself with complete forms of worship, 
with a view to their use by gatherings of lay members when no 
clergyman or other extempore leader of worship may be present. 

" The next evening we were favored with a discourse by (I should 
rather say through) a lady passenger, somewhat famous among 
Spiritualists as a * medium * for this sort of communications. I 
feel much obliged to her for so readily and freely enabhng us to Us- 
ten to this sort of teaching ; but my gratitude by no means extends 
to the ' spirits,' who gave us a poor, rambling, incoherent discourse, 
which seemed to me but a dilution of some of the poorest plati- 
tudes of Jackson Davis, — a weak sherry-cobbler, compounded 
from ' The Vestiges of Creation,' * Nature's Divine Revelations,' and 
the most rarefied yet non-luminous fog of modern Pantheism. 
Withal, the manner was that of our very worst Fourth-of-July 
orators, — which I do intensely abominate, — and the diction full 
of forty-eight-pounders mounted on very rickety pig-pens. I am 
sure the lady would have done much better if she had exorcised 
the spirits, and just given us a discourse in her OAvn natural man- 
ner, and out of her own head. If she ever consents to speak again, 
I hope she will profit by this suggestion." 

MR. GREELEY IS SHAVED. 

" I got one extra ghmpse of sea-hfe by reason of the lack of a 
barber on the Asia in common with all the Cunarders. Unschooled 
in the art tonsorial, I had gone unshaved more than a week, and 
met the remonstrances of friends with a simple averment that what 
they urged was impossible. In this I was at length overheard by 
a seaman on deck, who interpleaded that if I would follow him I 
should be speedily and satisfactorily rendered beardless. I could 
hardly back out ; so I followed him into the ship's forecastle, took 
my seat on a rough bench without a back, whereupon a rougher 
tar, with an instrument which he seems to have mistaken for a 
razor, performed the operation required, and pocketed a quarter 
therefor without grumbling. I did not offer him more, for my face 
was smarting at the time ; but the sights and smells of that fore- 
castle were richly worth a dollar. When we consider that there, 
in a space not cubically larger than two average prison-cells, some 
thirty or forty men Uve and sleep, without a crevice for ventilation, 



882 HORACE GREELEY Iis' A FRENCH PRISON. 

and in a reek of foul effluvia so dense as to defy description, how 
can we wonder that sailors often act like beasts on shoi'e if they 
are forced to live so like beasts on water ? Ah, Messrs. Merchant 
Princes of New York ! before you waste one more dollar on at- 
tempts to improve the moral and rehgious condition of seamen, be 
entreated to secure them a chance to breathe pure air on board 
your own vessels, — to sleep at least as healthfully and decently as 
your hogs ! Until you do this, preaching to them, scattering tracts 
and Bibles among them, and even building sailors' homes for them 
on land, — though all excellent in their time and place, — will be 
just so piuch cash and effort thrown away." 

Upon his arrival in Paris he entered upon the laborious duty of 
sight-seeing with his usual vigor, and daily related his experien- 
ces to the readers of the Tribune with characteristic comments. 
One or two passages from his letters may detain the reader for a 
moment. The following remarks are almost as applicable to the 
present moment as they were to the state of things in 1855 : — 

WILL THE EMPIRE LAST ? 

" I meet no one who believes it will survive the present Emperor, 
but very many who think it will last as long as he does. While 
no one speaks of his patriotism or disinterestedness, even by way 
of joke, there is a very general trust in his ability and confidence 
in his indefatigable energy. He is probably the most active, untir- 
ing ruler now living, and in this respect at least reminds the French 
of ' Napoleon le Grand.' He has, besides, the undoubted courage, 
inscrutable purpose, and unwavering fkith in his * star,* which befit 
the heir of the first Bonaparte. He is, moreover, the only focus 
around which all the anti-Republican forces and interests in France 
can for the present be rallied. The priests do not imagine him de- 
vout nor sincerely attached to their fortunes, but they say, ' What 
matter, so long as he does our work ? ' The Legitimists and Or- 
leanists (the former comprising nearly all the remains of the wool 
or land-owning aristocracy, the latter including many of the master 
manufacturers, contractors, thrifty traders, stock-jobbers, and lucky 
parvenues generally) say : * This cannot last ; but while it does 
last, it protects us from Jacobinism, from Socialism, from turbu- 
lence, anarchy, and the guillotine ; so let it last so long as it will. 



HORACE GREELEY AT THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON. 383 

The more intelligent workmen, the skilful artificers, the thinkers, 
the teachers, the observing, aspiring youth, who are almost to a 
man Republicans, say : * This evidently cannot last ; then why 
phmge the nation into intestine convulsion and bloodshed, when 
it is already groaning under the load of a distant, expensive, and 
sanguinary foreign war ? ' And thus the general conviction that 
the empire is but a state of transition serves to protect it from 
present assault and immediate danger." 

THE EXHIBITION. 

"I bid adieu to the World's Exhibition of 1855 in the conviction 
that I have not half seen it, and that nine tenths of its visitors are 
even more ignorant of its contents than I am. Its immensity tends 
to confuse and bewilder ; the eye glances rapidly from one brilliant 
object to another, while the mind fixes steadily upon none ; so that 
lie who wanders, fitfully gazing from court to court, from gallery to 
gallery, may carry away nothing positive but a headache. You 
will see hundreds jostling and crowding for a peep at the Imperial 
diamonds, crowns, &c., wliich are said to have cost several millions 
of dollars, (by whom earned ? how taken from them ?) where a 
dozen can M'ith difficulty be collected to witness the operation of a 
new machine calculated to confer signal benefits on the whole civ- 
ilized world. Who looks at the self-adjusting windmill, which 
was first exhibited in our country last year ? Yet that, if it prove 
what it promises, will do mankind more service than all the dia- 
monds ever diverted from their legitimate office of glass-cutting to 
lend a false, deceitful glitter to the brows of Tyranny and Crime. 
Here is a poor French artisan with a very simple contrivance for 
taking the long, coarse hairs from rabbit-skins, leaving the fine, 
soft fur to be removed by itself, — the machine possibly costing 
twenty francs, and the dressing therewith of each skin hardly a 
cent, while the value of the fur is thereby doubled. This is a 
Tery small matter, which hardly any one regards; yet it is proba- 
bly worth to Europe more than the annual cost of either of its 
royal families, or twenty times the value of them all" 

HORACE GREELEY AT THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON. 

" The Invalides is a great establishment, erected in the sonthwesi 
quarter of Paris by Louis XIV., as a hospital or home for maimed, 



384 HORACE GREELEY JK A FRENCH PRISON. 

disabled, or worn-out soldiers, — the surviving victims of the bloody 
phantom, Glory. It has accommodations for some five thousand, 
though I believe a smaller number are now quartered there, — 
some three thousand only ; but the war with Russia will doubt- 
less create a speedy demand for all its accommodations, as in the 
days of Napoleon I. Here the still surviving wrecks and relics of 
bygone wars doze out their remnant of existence, being frugally 
fed and lodged at the expense of the nation for whose supposed 
safety, interest, or honor they have risked their lives, shed their 
blood, and often lost their limbs. The arrangements for their sub- 
sistence and comfort are very systematic and thorough ; their food 
and lodging are of better quality and better ordered than those of 
the peasantry in their humble homes ; they have a fine church in 
one end of the great quadrangular building which forms their 
'hotel,' with no lack of priestly ministrations. Their church is 
decorated rather than enriched with many pictures; yet there 
is one painting on glass representing the Dead Christ which may 
not be approved by critics, but which fixed my attention more 
than any other work of art I have seen in Paris. Though you 
know what it is, you cannot dispel the impression that you are 
looking through a glass case or coffin, and gazing on an actual 
corpse or waxen model of it lying cold and stark therein. The 
illusion is so perfect as to be painful, and therein, if anywhere, is 
its fault. 

" Opposite the entrance of this church (which is still hung with 
foreign flags, the trophies of French victories, though the twenty- 
five hundred such which formerly decorated it were burnt by Jo- 
seph Bonaparte's order the night before the capture of Paris by the 
Allies in 1814) rises the grand altar, resplendent in gold, and 
lighted- by side-windows with such art that, even in a dark, rainy 
day, the whole seems to bask and blaze in the richest sunhght ; 
and behind this, in what would seem to be an extension of the 
church, is the Tomb of Napoleon I. Though you are within a 
few feet of this structure when near the grand altar in the church, 
you are compelled to go half a mile around to enter it ; and I am 
not quite sure that the journey is repaid to those whose admira- 
tion of military or other despots is not stronger than mine. Here 
marble and porphyry, painting and sculpture, gilding and mosaic, 
have been lavished without stint, and some two milUons of dollars 



THE FRENCH SUNDAY. 3§5 

■wrested fi-om the scanty earnings of an overtaxed peasantry tc 
honor the bones of him who while hving was so prodigal alike of 
their treasure and their blood. The author of this squandering 
idolatry was Louis Philippe, who thought he was ingratiating 
himself with the French people by pandering to the worship of 
the military Juggernaut, and whose family now live, as he himself 
died, in exile and humihation, while the vast estates he left them 
have been seized and confiscated by the nephew and heir of the 
Corsican he thus helped to deify. Who can pity the schemer thus 
caught in his own snare ? Who can marvel that France, not yet 
fully cured of that passion for glory which exults over a victory 
because our side has won, and not because the universal sway of 
justice and equity has been brought nearer thereby, should find 
herself ground under the heel of a fresh despot, who tears her 
youth from their beloved homes and useful labors to swell the un- 
ripe harvest of death on the battle-field ? I forget the name of 
the French Democrat who observed that his country could never 
enjoy true liberty until the ashes of Napoleon shall be torn from 
this costly mausoleum and thrown into the Seine, but I fully con- 
cur in liis opinion." 

THE FRENCH SUNDAY. 

"I am no formaUst, and would not have Sunday kept absolutely 
sacred from labor and recreations with all the strictness enjoined 
in the Mosaic ritual ; I beheve the cramped and weary toiler 
through six days of each week may better walk or ride out with 
his children and breathe fresh, pure air on Sunday than not at all ; 
yet this French use of the Christian Sabbath as a mere fete day, or 
holiday, impresses me very unfavorably. Half the stores are open 
on that day ; men are cutting stone and doing all manner of work 
as on other days ; the journals are pubhshed, ofi&ces open, business 
transacted ; only there is more hilarity, more dancing, more drink- 
ing, more theatre-going, more dissipation, than on any other day 
of the week. I suspect that Labor gets no more pay in the long 
run for seven days' work per week than it would for six, and that 
Morahty suffers, and Philanthropy is more languid than it would 
be if one day in each week were generally welcomed as a day of 
rest and worship.'* 



25 



335 HORACE GRERLEY IH A FRENCH PRISON. 

FRENCH AGRICULTURE. 

" A Yankee here lately said to a Frenclimaii : ' I am amazed that 
your people continue to cut grass with that short, clumsy, wide- 
bladed, straight-handled, eleventh-century implement, when we in 
America have scythes scarcely dearer which cut twice as fast.' 
' Why, you see,' responded Monsieur, ' while you have less labor 
than you need, we have far more ; so that while it is your study 
to economize human exertion, it is ours to find employment for 
our surplus. We have probably twice as many laborers as we 
need.' ' Then,' persisted Jonathan, ' your true course would seem 
to be to break your scythes in two and work them at half their 
present length, thus adjusting your implements to your work, 
since you are confessedly unable to find work enough for your la- 
borers, even with the wretched implements you now use.' Mon- 
sieur did not see the matter in this light, and the stream of conver- 
sation flowed into another channel. 

" Now, while otherwise sensible Frenchmen actually believe that 
labor is here in excess, there is at this hour a pressing need of all the 
surplus labor of France for the next forty years to be absorbed in 
the proper drainage of her soil alone. For want of this, whole 
districts are submerged or turned to marsh for three or four months 
between November and April, obstructing labor, loading the air 
with unwholesome humidity, and subjecting the peasantry to 
fevers and other diseases. Thorough draining alone would im- 
mensely increase the annual product, the wealth, and ultimately, 
by promoting health and diffusing plenty, even the population of 
France. 

" So with regard to ploughing. It is not quite so bad here as in 
Spain, where a friend this season saw peasants ploughing with an 
implement composed of two clumsy sticks of wood, one of which 
(the horizontal) worked its way through the earth after the man- 
ner of a hog's snout, while the other, inserted in the former at a 
convenient angle, served as a handle, being guided by the plough- 
man's left hand, while he managed the team with his right. With 
this relic of the good old days the peasant may have annoyed and 
irritated a rood of ground per day to the depth of three inches ; 
and, as care is taken not to afflict in this fashion any field that can- 
not be irrigated, he may possibly, by the conjunction of good luck 



FRENCH AGRICULTURE. 387 

with laborious culture, obtain half a crop. It is a safe guess that 
this cultivator, living the year round on black bread moistened with 
weak vinegar or rancid oil, because unable to live better, cherishes 
a supreme contempt for all such quackery and humbug as book- 
farming. 

'' France has naturally a magnificent soil. I prefer it, all things 
considered, to that of our own Western States. We have much 
land that is richer at the outset, but very little that will hold its 
own in defiance of maltreatment so well, as this does. Lime 
abounds here in every form, — the railroads are often cut through 
hills of loose chalk, — and very much of the subsoil in this vicinity 
appears to be a rotten limestone or gypsum, but is said to be a ma- 
rine deposit, proved such by the infinity of shells therein imbed- 
ded. There is not a particle of stone in the surface soil ; the rotten 
gypsum is, for the most part, easily traversed by the plough, though 
at a depth of ten to twenty feet the same original formation may 
be found hard enough to quarry into building-stone. To re-enforce 
such a soil, after the exhaustion produced by a hundred grain-crops 
in succession, it is only requisite to run the plough two inches deeper 
than it has hither gone, — a process urgently desirable on other 
grounds than this. I never before observed land so thoroughly 
fortified against the destructive tendencies of human ignorance, 
indolence, and folly. Then the summer of France, as compared 
with ours, is cool and humid, exposing grain-crops to fewer dan- 
gers of smut, rust, &c., and breeding far fewer insects than does 
ours. (0 that there were some power in America adequate and 
resolved to protect those best firiends of farmers — the birds — 
against the murderous instincts of every young rufi&an who can 
shoulder a musket !) I have seldom seen finer wheat than grows 
profusely around Paris, and I think this region ought to average 
more bushels to the acre, in the course of a century, than any part 
of the United States. 

" But French genius and talent do not tend to the soil. I must 
have already observed that the ' Imperial School of Agriculture ' 
at G-rignon, though twenty-eight years old, with 1,100 acres of 
capital land, a choice stock, and well-adapted buildings, enters on 
its twenty-eighth year with barely seventy pupils. A kindred tes- 
timony is wafted from a ' Reform School ' in the western part of 
the country. To this school young reprobates are sent fi-om the 



388 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. 

adjacent cities, and made adepts in agriculture as .. j . ^ 'ali- 
ment for their sins ; and its last official report boasts that the school 
has been conducted with such wisdom and success that over half 
of its graduates have enlisted in the army ! There 's a climax for 
you ! " 

While he was engaged in visiting the interesting objects of the 
French metropohs, he had the novel experience of being arrested 
for debt, and a debt which he had never contracted. Mr. Grreeley 
has related this adventure at length, and in his own way. The 
following is his narrative : — 

THE ARREST. 

" I had been looking at things if not into them for a good many years prior 
to yesterday. I had climbed mountains and descended into mines, had groped 
in caves and scaled precipices, seen Venice and Cincinnati, Dublin and Min- 
eral Point, Niagara and St. Gothard, and really supposed I was approximating 
a middling outside knowledge of things in general. I had been chosen de- 
fendant in several libel suits, and been flattered with the information that my 
censures were deemed of more consequence than those of other people, and 
should be paid for accordingl}'. I had been through twenty of our States, yet 
never in a jail outside of New York, and over half Europe, yet never looked 
into one. Here I had been seeing Paris for the last six weeks, visiting this 
sight, then that, till there seemed little remaining worth looking at or after, — 
j'^et I had never once thought of looking into a debtors' prison. I should 
probably have gone away next week, as ignorant in that regard as I came, 
when circumstances favored me most unexpectedly with an inside view of 
this famous ' Maison de Detention,' or Prison for Debtors, 70 Rue de Clichy. 
I think what I have seen here, fairly told, must be instructive and interesting, 
and I suppose others will tell the story if I do not, — and I don't know any 
one whose opportunities will enable him to tell it so accurately as I can. So 
here goes. 

*' But first let me explain and insist on the important distinction between in- 
side and outside views of a prison. People fancy they have been in a prison 
■where they have by courtesy been inside of the gates ; but that is properly 
an outside view, — at best, the view accorded to an outsider. It gives you no 
proper idea of the place at all, — no access to its penetralia. The difference 
even between this outside and the proper inside view is very broad indeed. 
The greenness of those who don't know how the Avorld looks from the wrong 
side of the gratings is pitiable. Yet how many reflect on the disdain with 
which the lion must regard the bumpkin who perverts his goadstick to the 
ignoble use of stirring said lion up ! or how many suspect that the grin where- 
with the baboon contemplates the human ape who with umbrella at arm's 



THE ARREST. 389 

length is poking Jocko for his doxy's delectation, is one of contempt rather 
than complacency! Rely. on it, the world seen here behind the gratings is 
very different in aspect from that same world otherwise inspected. Others 
may think so, — I knew it. And thi^ is how. 

" I had been down at the Palace of Industry and returned to my lodgings, 
when, a little before four o'clock yesterday afternoon, four strangers called for 
me. By the help of my courier, 1 soon learned that they had a writ of arrest 
for me at the suit or one Mons. Lechesne, sculptor, affirming that he sent a 
statue to the New York Crystal Palace Exhibition, at or on the way to which 
it had been broken, so that it could not be (at all events it had not been) re- 
stored to him ; wherefore he asked of me, as a director and representative of 
the Crystal Palace Association, to pay him ' douze mille francs,' or $2,500. 
Not happening to have the change, and no idea of paying this demand if I 
had it, I could only signify those facts; whereupon they told me that I was 
under arrest, and must go along, which I readily did. We drove circuitously 
to the sculptor's residence at the other end of Paris, waited his convenience 
for a long half-hour, and then went to the President Judge who had issued 
the writ. I briefly explained to him my side of the case, when he asked me 
if I wished to give bail. I told him I would give good bail for my appearance 
at court at any time, but that I knew no man in Paris whom I felt willing to 
ask to become my security for the payment of so large a sum as $ 2,500. 
After a little parley I named Judge Piatt, United States Secretary of Legation, 
as one who, I felt confident, would recognize for my appearance when wanted, 
and this suggestion met with universal assent. Twice over I carefully ex- 
plained that I preferred going to prison to asking any friend to give bail for 
the payment in any case of this claim, and knew I was fully understood. So 
we all, except the judge, drove off together to the Legation. 

" There we found Judge P., who readily agreed to recognize as I required ; 
but now the plaintiff and his lawyer refused to accept him as security in any 
way, alleging that he was privileged from arrest by his office. He offered to 
give his check on Greene & Co., bankers, for the 12,000 francs in dispute as 
security for my appearance; but they would not have him in any shape. 
While we were chaffering, Mr. Maunsell B. Field, United States Commissioner 
in the French Exposition, came along, and offered to join Mr. Piatt in the 
recognizance 5 but nothing would do. Mr. Field then ofiered to raise the money 
demanded; but I said, No, if the agreement before the judge was not ad- 
hered to by the other side, I would give no bail whatever, but go to prison. 
High words ensued, and the beginning of a scuffle, in the midst of which I, 
half unconsciously, descended from the carriage. Of course I was ordered 
back instanter^ and obeyed so soon as I understood the order, but we were all 
by this time losing temper. As putting me in jail would simply secure my 
forthcoming when wanted, and as I was ready to give any amount of security 
for this, which the other side had once agreed to take, I thought they were 
rather crowding matters in the course they were taking. So, as I was making 
my friends too late for a pleasant dinner-party at Trois Freres, where I had 
expected to join them, I closed the discussion by insisting that we should 
drive off. 



390 HOEACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. 

" Crossing the Avenue Champs Elys^es the next moment, our horses struck 
another horse, took fright, and ran until reined up against a tree, disabling the 
concern. My cortege of officers got out; I attempted to follow, but was 
thrust back very roughly and held in with superfluous energy, since they had 
had abundant opportunity to see that I had no idea of getting away from 
them. I had in fact evinced ample determination to enjoy their delightful 
society to the utmost. At last, they had to transfer me to another carriage, 
but they made such a parade of it, and insisted on taking hold of me so 
numerously and so fussily (this being just the most thronged and conspicuous 
locality in Paris), that I came near losing my temper again. We got along, 
however, and in due time arrived at this spacious, substantial, secure estab- 
lishment, No. 70 Rue de Clichy. 

" I was brought in through three or four heavy iron doors to the office of the 
Governor, where I was properly received. Here I was told I must stay till 
nine o'clock, since the President Judge had allowed me till that hour to find 
bail. In vain I urged that I had refused to give bail, would give none, and 
wanted to be shown to my cell, — I must stay here till nine o'clock. So I 
ordered something for dinner, and amused myself by looking at the ball play, 
&c., of the prisoners in the yard, to whose immunities I was not yet eligible, 
but I had the privilege of looking in through the barred windows. The yard 
is one of the best I have ever seen anywhere, has a good many trees and some 
flowers, and, as the wall is at least fifteen feet high, and another of twenty 
surrounding it, with guards with loaded muskets always pacing between, I 
should judge the danger of burglary or other annoyances from without very 
moderate. 

" My first visitor was Judge Mason, U. S. Embassador, accompanied by 
Mr. Kirby, one of the attaches of the Embassy. Judge M. had heard of my 
luck from the Legation, and was willing to serve me to any extent, and in any 
manner. I was reminded by my position of the case of the prying Yankee who 
undertook to fish out a gratuitous opinion on a knotty point in a lawsuit in which 
he was involved. ' Supposing,' said he to an eminent counsellor, you were in- 
volved in such and such a difficulty, what would you do? ' 'Sir,' said the 
counsellor with becoming gravity, 'I should take the very best legal advice I 
could obtain.' I told Judge M. that I wanted neither money nor bail, but a 
first-rate French lawyer, who could understand my statements in English, at 
the very earliest moment. Judge M. left to call on Mr. James Munroe, banker, 
and send me a lawyer as soon as could be. This was done, but it was eight 
o'clock on Saturday night, before which hour at this season most eminent 
Parisians have left for their country residences; and no lawyer of the proper 
stamp and standing could then be or has yet been found. 

THE INCARCERATION. 

*' At the designated hour I was duly installed and admitted to all the privi- 
leges of Clichy. By ten o'clock each of us lodgers had retired to our several 
apartments (about eight feet by five), and an obliging functionary came aroimd 



THE INCARCERATION. 391 

and locked out all rascally intruders. I don't think. I ever before slept in 
a place so perfectly secure. At six this morning this extra protection was 
withdrawn, and each of us was thenceforth obliged to keep watch over his 
own valuables. We uniformly keep good hours here in Clichy, which is what 
not many large hotels in Paris can boast of. 

" The bedroom appointments are not of a high order, as is reasonable, since 
we are only charged for them four sous (cents) per night, washing extra. The 
sheets are rather of a hickory order (mine were given me clean); the bed is 
indifferent, but I have slept on worse; the window lacks a curtain or blinds, 
but in its stead there are four strong upright iron bars, which are a perfect 
safeguard against getting up in the night and pitching or falling out so as to 
break your neck, as any one who went out would certainly do. (I am in 
the fifth or highest story.) Perhaps one of my predecessors was a somnam- 
bulist. I have two chairs (one less than I am entitled to), two little tables 
(probably one of them extra, by some mistake), and a cupboard which may 
once have been clean. The pint washbowl and half-pint pitcher, candles 
&c., I have ordered and pay for. I am a little ashamed to own that my 
repose has been indifferent; but then I never do sleep well in a strange 
place. 

" Descending to the common room on the lower floor this morning, I find 
there an American (from Boston), who has met me often and knew me at 
once, though I could not have called him by name. He seemed rather 
amazed to meet me here (I believe he last before saw me at the Astor House), 
but greeted me very cordially, and we ordered breakfast for both in my room. 
It was not a sumptuous meal, but we enjoyed it. Next he made me ac- 
quainted with some other of our best fellow-lodgers, and four of us agreed to 
dine together after business hours. Before breakfast, a friend from the outer 
world (M. Vattemare) had found access to me, though the rules of the prison 
allow no visitors till ten o'clock. I needed first of all lawyers, not yet pro- 
curable; next law-books (American), which Mr. Vattemare knew just where 
to lay his hands on. I had them all on hand and my citations looked up long 
before I had any help to use them. But let my own affairs wait a little till I 
dispense some of my gleanings in Clichy. 

" This is perhaps the only large dwelling-house in Paris where no one ever 
suffers from hunger. Each person incarcerated is allowed a franc per day to 
live on; if this is not forthcoming from his creditor, he is at once turned out 
to pick up a living as he can. While he remains here he must have his franc 
per day, paid every third day. From this is deducted four sous per day for 
his bedding, and one sou for his fire (in the kitchen), leaving him fifteen sous 
net and cooking fire paid for. This will keep him in bread any how. But 
there exists among the prisoners, and is always maintained, a ' Philanthropic 
Society,' which, by cooking altogether and dividing into messes, is enabled 
to give every subscriber to its articles a very fair dinner for sixteen sous 
(eleven cents), and a scantier one for barely nine sous. He who has no friends 
but the inevitable franc per day may still have a nine-sous dinner almost 
every day and a sixteen-sous feast on Sunday, by living on bread and water 



S02 HORACE GREELEY IN"* A FRENCH PRISON. 

or being so sick as not to need anything for a couple of days each week. I 
regret to say that the high price of food of late has cramped the resources of 
the ' Philanthropic Society,' so that it has been obliged to appeal to the public 
for aid. I trust it will not appeal in vain. It is an example of the advantage 
of association, whose benefits no one will dispute. 

" I never met a more friendly and social people than the inmates of Clichy. 
Before I had been up two hours this morning, though most of them speak only 
French and I but English, the outlines of my case were generally known, my 
character and standing canvassed and dilated on, and I had a dozen fast friends 
in another hour; had I been able to speak French, they would have been a 
hundred. Of course, we are not all saints here, and make no pretensions to 
be; some of us are incorrigible spendthrifts, — desperately fast men, hurried 
to ruin by association with still faster women, — probably some unlucky 
rogues among us, and very likely a fool or two; though as a class I am sure 
my associates will compare favorably in intelligence and intellect with so 
many of the next men you meet on the Boulevards or in Broadway. Several of 
them are men of decided ability and energy, — the temporary victims of other 
men's rascality or their own over-sanguine enterprise, — sometimes of ship- 
wreck, fire, or other unavoidable misfortune. A more hearty and kindly set 
of men I never met in my life than are those who can speak English ; I have 
acquired important help from three or four of them in copying and translating 
papers; and never was I more zealously nor effectively aided than by these 
acquaintances of to-day, to not one of whom would I dare to offer money for 
the service. Where could I match this out of Clichy? 

" Let me be entirely candid. I say nothing of ' Liberty,' save to caution 
outsiders in France to be equally modest, but ' Equality and Fraternity ' I 
have found prevailing here more thoroughly than elsewhere in Europe. Still, 
we have not realized the Social Millennium, even in Clichy. Some of us 
were born to gain our living by the hardest and most meagrely rewarded labor^ 
others to live idly and sumptuously on the earnings of others. Of course, 
these vices of an irrational and decaying social state are not instantly eradi- 
cated by our abrupt removal to this mansion. Some of us cook, while others 
only know how to eat, and so require assistance in the preparation of our food, 
as none is cooked or even provided for us, and our intercourse with the outei 
world is subject to limitations. Those of us who lived generously aforetime, 
and are in for gentlemanly sums, are very apt to have money which the luck- 
less chaps who are in for a beggarly hundred francs or so, and have no fixed 
income beyond the franc per day, are very glad to earn by doing us acts of 
kindness. One of these attached himself to me immediately on my taking 
possession of my apartment, and proceeded to make my bed, bring me basiu 
and pitcher of water, matches, lights, &c., for which I expect to pay him, — 
these articles being reckoned superfluities in Clichy. But no such aristocratic 
distinction as master, no such degrading appellation as servant, is tolerated in 
this community ; this philanthropic fellow-boarder is known to all as my 
' auxiliary.' Where has the stupid v/orld outside known how to drape the 
hard realities of life with fig-leaf so graceful as this? 



THE INCARCERATION. 393 

" So of all titular distinctions. We pretend to have abjured titles of honor in 
America, and the only consequence is that everybody has a title, — either 
Honorable, or General, or Colonel, or Reverend, or at the very least Esquire. 
But h«re in Clichy all such empty and absurd prefixes are absolutely un- 
known, — even names. Christian or family, are discarded as useless, antiquated 
lumber. Every lodger is known by the number of his room only; mine is 
139; and whenever a friend calls, a ' Commissionaire ' comes in from the outer 
apartments to the great hall sacred to our common use, and begins calling out, 
'Cent-trente-neuf ' (phonetically ' sent-tran-nuf '), at the top of his voice, and 
goes on yelling as he climbs, in the hope of finding or calling me short of 
ascending to my fifth-story sanctuary. To nine tenths of ray comrades I am only 
known as ' san-tran-nuf.' My auxiliary is No. 54, and when I need his aid I 
go singing ' Sankan-cat,' after the same fashion. Equality being thus rigidly 
preserved, in spite of slight diversities of fortune, the jealousies, rivalries, and 
heart-burnings which keep most of mankind in a ferment are here absolutely 
unknown. I never before talked so much with so many people intimately 
acquainted with each other without hearing something said or insinuated to 
one another's prejudice ; here there is nothing of the sort. Some folks out- 
side are here fitted with characters which they would hardly consider flatter- 
ing, — some laws and usages get the blessings they richly deserve, — but 
among ourselves all is harmony and good-will. How would Meurice's, tho 
Hotel de Ville, or even the Tuileries, like to compare notes with us on this 
head ? 

" Our social intercourse with outsiders is under most enlightened regula- 
tions. A person calls who wishes to see one of us, and is thereupon admitted 
through two or three doors, but not within several locks of us. Here he gives 
his card and pays two sous to a Commissionaire to take it to No. — , of whom 
the interview is solicited. No. — being found, takes the card, scrutinizes it, 
and, if he chooses to see the expected visitor, writes a request for his admission. 
This is taken to a functionary, who grants the request, and the visitor is then 
brought into a sort of neutral reception-room, outside of the prison proper, 
but a good way inside of the hall wherein the visitor has hitherto tarried. 
But let the lodger say No, and the visitor must instantly walk out with a very 
tall flea in his ear. So perfect an arrangement for keeping duns, bores (writ- 
servers even), and all such enemies of human happiness at a distance is found 
scarcely anywhere else, — at all events not in editors' rooms, I am sure of 
that. But yesterday an old resident here, who ought to have been up to 
the trap, was told that a man wished to see him a moment at the nearest 
grate, and, being completely off" his guard, he went immediately down, with- 
out observing or requiring the proper formalities, and was instantly served 
with a fresh writ. ' Sir,' said he, with proper indignation, to the sneak of an 
officer (who had doubtless made his way in here by favor or bribery), 'if 
you ever serve me that trick again, you will go out of here half killed.* 
However, he had mainly his own folly to blame; he should have stood upon 
his reserved rights, and bade the outsider send up his card like a gentleman, 
if he aspired to a gentleman's society. 



304 HORACE GREELEY IN A FRENCH PRISON. 

•' And this brings me to the visiting-room, where I have seen very many 
friends during the day, including two United States Ministers, beside almost 
every one belonging to our Legation here, three bankers, and nearly all the 
Americans I know in Paris, but not orte French lawyer of the standing re- 
quired, for it seems impossible to find one in Paris to-day. This room can 
hardly be called a parlor, all things considered; but it has been crowded all 
day (ten to six) with wives and female friends visiting one or other of us 
insiders, — perhaps it may be most accurately characterized as the kissing- 
room. I should like to speak of the phases of life here from hoiir to hour 
presented, — of the demonstrations of fervent affection, the anxious consola- 
tions, the confidential whisperings, and the universal desire of each hasty 
iete-a-tete to respect the sacredness of others' confidence, so that fifteen or 
twenty couples converse here by the hour within a space thirty feet by 
twenty, yet no one knows, because no one wishes to know, what any other 
couple are saying. But I must hurry over all this, or my letter will never 
have an end. 

" Formerly, Clichy was in bad repute on account of the facility wherewith 
all manner of females called upon and mingled with the male lodgers in the 
inner sanctum. All this, however, has been corrected ; and no woman is now 
admitted beyond the public kissing-room except on an express order from the 
Prefecture of Police, which is only granted to the well-authenticated wife or 
child of an inmate. (The female prison is in an entirely separate wing of the 
building.) The enforcement of this rule is most rigid; and, while I am not 
inclined to be vainglorious, and do not doubt that other large domiciles in 
Paris are models of propriety and virtue, yet this I do say, that the domestic 
morals of Clichy may safely challenge a comparison with those of Paris 
generally. I might put the case more strongly, but it is best to keep within 
the truth. 

" So with regard to liquor. They keep saying there is no Prohibitory Law 
in France ; but they mistake, if Clichy is in France. No ardent spirits are 
brought into this well-regulated establishment, unless for medical use, except 
in express violation of law; and the search and seizure clauses here are a 
great deal more rigorous and better enforced than in Maine. I know a little 
is smuggled in notwithstanding, mainly by oflScials, for money goes a great 
way in France; but no woman comes in without being felt all over (by a 
woman) for concealed bottles of liquor. There was a small flask on our 
(private) dinner-table to-day of what was called brandy, and smelt like a 
compound of spirits of turpentine and diluted aqua-fortis (for adulteration 
is a vice which prevails even here); but not a glass is now smuggled in where 
a gallon used to come in boldly under the protection of law. Wine, being 
here esteemed a necessary, is allowed in moderation ; no inmate to have more 
than one bottle per day either of ten-sous or twenty-sous wine, according to 
his taste or means, — no better and no more. I don't defend the consistency 
of these regulations; we do some things better in America than even in 
Clichy ; but here drunkenness is absolutely prevented and riotous living sup- 
pressed by a sumptuary law far more stringent than any of our States ever 



THE INCARCERATIOX. 395 

tried. A d, mind you, this is no criminal prison, but simply a house of deten- 
tion for those who happen to have less money than others would like to ex- 
tract from their pockets, many of whom do not pay simply because they do 
not owe. So, if any one tells you again that Liquor Prohibition is a Yankee 
novelty, just ask him what he knows of Clichy, 

" I know that cookery is a point of honor with the French, and rightly, 
for they approach it with the inspiration of genius. Sad am I to say that 1 
find no proof of this eminence in Clichy, and am forced to the conclusion that 
to be in debt and unable to pay does not qualify even a Frenchman in the culi- 
nary art. My auxiliary doubtless does his best, but his resources are limited, 
and fifty fellows dancing round one range, with only a few pots and kettles 
among them, probably confuses him. Even our dinner to-day (four of us — 
two Yankees, an English merchant, and an Italian banker — dined en famille 
in No. 98), on what we ordered from an out-door restaurant (such are the 
prejudices of education and habit), and paid fifty sous each for, did not 
6eera to be the thing. The gathering of knives, forks, spoons, bottles, &c., 
from Nos. 82, 63, and 139, to set the common table, was the freshest feature 
Qf the spread. 

" The sitting was nevertheless a pleasant one, and an Englishman joined 
us after the cloth was (figuratively) removed, who was much the cleverest 
man of the party. This man's case is so instructive that I must make room 
for it. He has been everywhere and knows everything, but is especially 
strong in Chemistry and Metallurgy. A few weeks ago he was a coke-burner 
at Rouen, doing an immense and profitable business, till a heavy debtor 
failed, which frightened his partner into running oflf with all the cash of the 
concern, and my friend was compelled to stop payment. He called together 
the creditors, eighty in number (their banker alone was in for forty-five 
thousand francs), and said, ' Here is my case; appoint your own receiver, con- 
duct the business wisely, and all will be paid.' Every man at once assented, 
and the concern was at once put in train of liquidation. But a discharged 
employee of the concern, at this moment owing it fifteen thousand francs now 
in judgment, said, ' Here is my chance for revenge ' ; so he had my friend 
arrested and put here as a foreign debtor, though he has been for years in 
most extensive business in France, and was, up to the date of his bankruptcy, 
paying the government fifteen hundred francs for annual license for the 
privilege of employing several hundred Frenchmen in transforming valueless 
peat into coke. He will get out by and by, and may prosecute his per- 
secutor, but the latter is utterly irresponsible; and meantime a most ex- 
tensive business is being wound up at Rouen by a receiver, with the only 
man qualified to oversee and direct the affair in close jail at Paris. This 
is but one case among many such. I always hated and condemned imprison- 
ment for debt untainted by fraud, — above all, for suspicion of debt, —but I 
never so well knew why I hated it as now. 

" There are other cases and classes very different from this, — gay lads, 
who are working out debts which they never would have paid otherwise ; for 
here in Clichy every man actually adjudged guilty of indebtedness is sen- 



390 HORACE GREELEY TfJ A FRENCH PRISON. 

tenced to stay a certain term, in the discretion of the court, never more than 
ten years. The creditors of some would like to coax them out to-morrow, but 
they are not so soft as to go until the debt is worked out, — so far, that is, 
that they can never again be imprisoned for it. The first question asked of 
a new-comer is, ' Have you ever been here before V ' and if he answers, ' Yes,' 
the books are consulted; and if this debt was charged against him, then he is 
remorselessly turned into the street. No price would procure such a man a 
night's lodging in Clichy. Some are here who say their lives were so tor- 
mented by duns and writs, that they had a friendly creditor put them here 
for safety from annoyance. And some of our humbler brethren, I am assured, 
having been once here, and earned four or five francs a day as auxiliaries, with 
cheap lodgings and a chance to forage off the plates of those they serve, ac- 
tually get themselves put in because they can do so well nowhere else. A 
few days since, an auxiliary, who had aided and trusted a hard-up English- 
man forty-eight francs on honor (all debts contracted here are debts of honor 
purely, and therefore are always paid), received a present of five hundred, 
francs from the grateful obligee, when, a few days after, he received ample 
funds from his distant resources, paid everything, and went out with flying 
colors. 

'' To return to my own matter: I have been all day convincing one party 
of friends after another as they called, that I do not yet need their generous- 
ly proffered money or names, — that I will put up no security, and take no step 
whatever, until I can consult a good French lawyer, see where I stand, and 
get a judicial hearing if possible. I know the Judge did not mean nor ex- 
pect that I should be sent here, when I left his presence last evening; I want 
to be brought before him forthwith on a plea of urgency, which cannot so well 
be made if I am at liberty. If he says that I am properly held in duress, then 
bailing out will do little good ; for forty others all about me either have or 
think they have claims against the Crystal Palace for the damage or non- 
return of articles exhibited: if I am personally liable to these, all France be- 
comes a prison to me. When I have proper legal advice I shall know what to 
do; until then it is safest to do nothing. Even at the worst, I hate to have any 
one put up 12,000 francs for me, as several are willing to do, until I am sure 
there is no alternative. I have seen so much mischief from going security, that 
I dread to ask it when I can possibly do without. ' Help one another' is a 
good rule, but abominably abused. A man in trouble is too apt to fly at once 
to his friends ; hence half a dozen get in where there need have been but oue. 
There is no greater device for multiplying misery than misused sympathy. 
Better first see if you cannot shoulder your own pack. 

" Out of Clichy, Monday eve, June 4, 1855. 
" Things have worked to-day veiy much as I had hoped and calculated. 
Friends had been active in quest of such lawyers as I needed, and two of the 
right oort were with me at a seasonable hour this morning. At three o'clock 
they had a hearing before the Judge, and w^e were all ready for it, thanks to 
friends inside of the gratings as well as out. Judge Piatt's official certificate 



THE INCARCERATION. 307 

as to the laws of our State governing the liability ot corporators has been of 
vital service to me; and when my lawyers asked, ' Where is your evidence 
that the effects of the New York Association are now in the hands of a 
receiver ? ' I answered. ' The gentleman who was talking with me in the 
visitors' room when you came in and took me away knows that perfectly; 
perhaps he is still there.' I was at once sent for him, and found him there. 
Thus all things conspired for good; and at four o'clock my lawyers and 
friends came to Clichy to bid me walk out, without troubling my friends for 
any security or deposit whatever. So I guess my last chance of ever learn- 
ing French is gone by the board. 

" Possibly I have given too much prominence to the brighter side of life in 
Clichy, for that seemed most to need a discoverer-, let me put a little shading 
into the picture at the finish. There is a fair barber's shop in one cell in 
Clichy which was yesterday in full operation; so, expecting to be called 
personally before the Judge, and knowing that I must meet many friends, I 
walked down stairs to be shaved, and was taken rather aback by the infor- 
mation that the barber had been set at liberty last evening, and there was not 
a man left in this whole concourse of practical ability to take his place. So 
there are imperfections in the social machinery even in Clichy. Fourier was 
right; it will take 1,728 persons (the cube of 12) to form a perfect Social 
Phalanx ; hence all attempts to do it with two hundred or less fail and must 
fail. We had about 144 in Clichy this morning, — men of more than average 
capacity; still there are hitches, as we have seen. I think I have learned 
more there than in any two previous days of my life; I never was busier; and 
yet I should feel that all over a week spent there would be a waste of time. 

" Let me close by stating that arrangements were made at once for the 
liberation of the only American I found or left there ; the first, I believe, who 
had been seen inside of the middle grating for months. For this he will be 
mainly indebted to the generosity of Messrs. Greene & Co., bankers, but 
others are willing to co-operate. I fear he might have stayed some time, had 
not my position brought him into contact with men whom his pride would 
not permit him to apply to, yet who will not let him stay there. I am well 
assured that he comes out to-night." 

This event, as the reader may infer from Mr. G-reeley's narrative, 
threw the Americans in Paris into a high degree of excitement, and 
there was manifested by all of them the utmost willingness to con- 
tribute both money and service for his hberation. It was at first 
supposed that the debt was only a pretext, and that the real mo- 
tive was pohtical. This, however, was not the case. Mr. G-reeley 
received particular attention from persons connected with the gov- 
ernment with whom he came in contact. 

" I left Paris," he says, "with a feeling that I had had quite enough 
of it. Paris is a pleasant city for those to whom pleasure is the 



.3C8 HORACE GREELEY IN 'A FRENCH PRISON. 

end of life ; but I, if exiled for five years to Europe, should be apt 
to give two of them to the British Isles, one each to G-ermany, 
Switzerland, and Italy, and hardly a month to France, her capital 
included. Life is here too superficial, too material, too egotistic. 
I could not be content in a great city which neither has nor feels 
the need of a Tabernacle or Exeter Hall. Vevay's and the Trois 
Freres are well in their way, but no substitute for those. Paris is 
the Paradise of Frenchmen, but my nature is not French, and 
never can be. I found friends in the gay metropolis, and trust I 
did not alienate any ; but I could make or strengthen attachments 
faster almost anywhere else. And so, with some pleasant and 
other less agreeable remembrances of the two months I had spent 
there, and with grateful regard to those who had there proved 
themselves friends indeed, it was with a real sense of rehef that I 
saw Paris fade behind and the broad, green country open before 
me, in the direction of Rouen, Dieppe, and the English Channel." 

He felt far more at home in London. "London," he remarked, 
" deepens its impression upon me with each visit ; nay, I rarely 
spend a day within its vast circumference without increasing won- 
der and admiration. It is the capital, if not of the civilized, cer- 
tainly of the commercial world, civilized and otherwise. To her 
wharves the raw produce of all climes and countries, to her vaults 
the gold of California and Australia, to her cabinets the gems of 
G-olconda and Brazil, insensibly gravitate. From this mighty heart 
radiate the main arteries of the world's trade ; a great crash here 
brings down leading and long-established houses in the South Pa- 
cific or the Yellow Sea. I dropped in to-day on an old friend wham 
I had known ten or fifteen years ago as a philosophic radical and 
social reformer in America. I found him in a great sugar-house 
under the shadow of the Bank, correcting a Price Current which he 
edits, having just made up a telegraphic despatch for his house's 
correspondents in Bombay. I found him calm and wise as ever ; 
more practical, some would say, but still hopeful of the good time 
coming ; he had been several years with that house, and he told 
me his income was quite satisfactory, and that his eldest son was 
doing very well in Australia. I came over from America with an 
intelligent and excellent English family that had been several years 
in Mexico, the husband and father managing a mine. They were 
on a visit to their native land to say good by to a son and brother 



THE INCARCERATION. 399 

m the army, who was ordered to the Crimea. By this time they 
are probably on their return to Mexico for another four years' so- 
journ. Their many heavy trunks were inscribed ' Maj. F , Lon- 
don.' And so the great city is constantly sending forth her thou- 
sands to every corner of the globe where goods may be sold, mines 
profitably worked, products gathered up, settlements planted or 
railroads constructed, — some of them to return after a season with 
riches, or distinction, or competence, — others to fill unmarked 
graves on far-ofi*, lonely shores, — but all to contribute to the 
wealth and power of the world's commercial emporium. Among 

our passengers out was Capt. B , a civil engineer, who had 

been surveying for a railroad, somewhere down in Spanish Amer- 
ica, and was returning with the result to his London employers. 

'Capt. B ,' asked a friend, casually, 'do you remain in England 

some time ? or are you going ofi" again ? ' 'I am going again,' 
was his quiet reply; 'but I don't know till I reach London 
whether I shall be employed in Brazil or in Asia Minor.' There 
is much mistaken pride and false dignity in England; but if a 
Briton insists on being proud of London, I shall not quarrel with 
him on that head." 

Of the House of Commons he said : "On the whole, I judged 
that the better order of speaking in the House of Commons sur- 
passes that which may be heard in our House of Representatives, — 
is more direct, substantial, and to the point, while the average abil- 
ity evinced in the speaking here is quite below that manifested in 
Congress. I had been misled into the notion that decided bores 
are regularly coughed down when they undertake to enlighten the 
House ; but I saw and heard half a dozen of them try it, and the 
remedy was never once applied. Yet I cannot realize that the 
provocation could well be greater." 

The celebrated Cremorne Oardens appear to have rather puzzled 
the American editor, as well they might. "I looked in," he says, 
" with a friend one evening, and found some three thousand people 
there, as many as six or eight hundred of them dancing at once 
under the open sky, on a shghtly raised floor surrounding the tall 
stand or tower in which the musicians were seated. There were 
not far from a thousand women present, most of them quite young, 
and the majority manifestly already lost to virtue if not quite dead 
to shame. What struck me with surprise was the fact that many 



400 HORACE GREELEY IN ♦A FRENCH PRISON. 

obviously respectable and undepraved girls mingled and danced 
in the throng, including mere children of ten or twelve years, 
who could not fail speedily to comprehend the errand on wldch 
the lost ones come hither. I had heard much of the decorous de- 
pravity of the Parisian dancing-gardens, though I never visited 
them ; here the decorum was dubious and the depravity unmistak- 
able. The English are not skilful in varnishing vice, — at least, I 
have seen no evidence of their tact in that Una. I endured the 
spectacle of men dancing with women when rather beery, and 
smoking ; but at last the sight of a dark and by no means elegant 
mulatto waltzing with a decent-looking white girl, while puffing 
away at a rather bad cigar, proved too much for my Yankee prej- 
udice and I started. In fact, it was about time, since it wanted but 
a quarter to eleven, and my lodgings, though this side of the middle 
of London, were some six miles distant. (The cabman charged for 
seven.) Cremorne, however, appeared to be just warming up to 
its evening's delectation." 

Two days after this adventure he was at Liverpool, preparing to 
embark for his native land, which he reached in safety after an 
absence of about three months. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

ASSAULTED IN WASHINGTON BY A MEMBER OF 
CONGRESS. 

The provocation— The assault — Why Mr. Greeley did not prosecute— The Tribune in- 
dicted in Virginia — Correspondence on slavery — Slavery ex labor. 

During the administrations of Franklin Pierce and James Bu- 
chanan, when the controversy respecting slavery was approaching 
a crisis, Mr. Greeley spent much of his time in Washington, com- 
menting for the Tribune upon the proceedings of Congress. While 
performing this duty in January, 1856, he incurred the resentment 
of Albert Rust, a member of Congress from Arkansas, by the fol- 
lowing remarks upon the course of that member during the con- 
test for the Speakership which resulted in the election of Mr. N. 
P. Banks. The following were the offensive words : — 

"I have had some acquaintance with human degradation; yet it did seem to 
me to-day that Rust's resolution in the House was a more discreditable propo- 
sition than I had ever known gravely submitted to a legislative body. Just 
consider the facts: Mr. Banks has for more than six weeks received the votes 
of a very large plurality of the House, — never polling more than ten short of 
a majority, usually only six or seven, and sometimes coming within two or 
three. He has repeatedly tendered his declination to his friends, and they have 
uniformly refused it, and placed him again in nomination. Last evening they 
held another caucus, resolved to support him to the end, and resolved to hold 
no more caucuses, lest their adversaries might be encouraged to hope that 
they would change their candidate. Yet, in the face of this demonstration, 
the two hostile minorities come into the house this morning and seriously at- 
tempt to invite Mr. Banks to decline ! for that is just what Rust's resolution 
amounts to. It could not afifect Mr. Banks's rights nor those of his support- 
ers; but it would seem to be an indignity, and might be expected to wound 
his sensibilities. But Mr. Banks will never take counsel with his bitter 
enemies as to the propriety of his withdrawal from the canvass." 

This appeared in the Tribune of January 26, 1856. A few 
hours after the arrival of the paper in Washington Mr. Rust mani- 
fested his indignation in the manner related by Mr. Greeley in the 
folic wing letter : — 

26 *" 



402 ASSAULTED BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. 

"I have heard since I came here a good deal of the personal vio- 
lence to which I was exposed, but only one man has offered to 
attack ne until to-day, and he was so drunk that he made a poor 
fist of it. In fact, I do not remember that any man ever seriously 
attacked me till now. 

" I was conversing with two gentlemen on my way down from 
the Capitol, after the adjournment of the House this afternoon, 
when a stranger requested a word with me. I stopped, and my 
friends went on. The stranger, who appeared in the prime of 
life, six feet high, and who must weigh over two hundred, thus 



" ' Is your name Greeley ? ' 

" ' Yes.' 

" 'Are you a non-combatant?' 

" ' That is according to circumstances.' 

" The words were hardly out of my mouth when he struck me 
a stunning blow on the right side of my head, and followed it by 
two or three more, as rapidly as possible. My hands were still in 
my great-coat pockets, for I had no idea that he was about to 
strike. He staggered me against the fence of the walk from the 
Capitol to the Avenue, but did not get me down. I rallied as soon 
as possible, and saw him standing several feet from me, with several 
persons standing or rushing in between us. I asked, ' Who is this 
man? I don't know him,' and understood him to answer, with 
an imprecation, 'You '11 know me soon enough,' or 'You 'U 
know me hereafter,' when he turned and went down toward the 
street. No one answered my inquiry directly, but some friends 
soon came up, who told me that my assailant was Albert Rust, M. 
C. from Arkansas. He gave no hint of any cause or pretext he 
may have had for this assault, but I must infer that it is to be found 
in my strictures in Monday's Tribune (letter of Thursday evening 
last) on his attempt to drive Mr. Banks out of the field as a candi- 
date for Speaker, by passing a resolution inviting all the present 
candidates to withdraw. I thought that a mean trick, and said so 
most decidedly ; I certainly think no better of it, now that I have 
made the acquaintance of its author. 

" The bully turned and walked down along; I followed, conversing 
with two friends. Crossing Four-and-a-half Street, they dropped 
behind to speak to acquaintances, and I, walking along toward the 



ASSAULTED BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. 403 

National Hotel, soon found myself in the midst of a huddle of 
strangers. One of these turned short upon me — I saw it was my 
former assailant — and said, ' Do you know me now ? ' I answered, 
'Yes; you are Rust of Arkansas.' He said something of what 
he would do if I were a combatant, and I rephed that I claimed no 
exemption on that account. He now drew a heavy cane, whieh I 
had not seen before, and struck a pretty heavy blow at my head, 
which I caught on my left arm, with no other damage than a 
rather severe bruise. He was trying to strike again, and I was 
endeavoring to close with him, when several persons rushed be- 
tween and separated us. I did not strike him at all, nor lay a fin- 
ger on him; but it certainly would have been a pleasure to me, 
had I been able to perform the public duty of knocking him down. 
I cannot mistake the movement of his hand on the Avenue, and 
am sure it must have been toward a pistol in his belt. And the 
crowd which surrounded us was nearly all Southern, as he doubt- 
less knew before he renewed his attack on me 

" I presume this is not the last outrage to which I am to be sub- 
jected. I came here with a clear understanding that it was about 
an even chance whether I should or should not be allowed to go 
home aUve; for my business here is to unmask hypocrisy, defeat 
treachery, and rebuke meanness, and these are not dainty employ- 
ments even in smoother times than ours. But I shall stay here 
just so long as I think proper, using great plainness of speech, but 
endeavoring to treat all men justly and faithfully. I may often 
judge harshly, and even be mistaken as to facts, but I shall always 
be ready to correct my mistakes and to amend my judgments. I 
shall carry no weapons and engage in no brawls ; but if rufi&ans 
waylay and assail me, I shall certainly not run, and, so far as able, 
I shall defend myself." 

The editor of the Tribune, though severely bruised, was not in- 
capacitated from continuing his editorial labors. Gentlemen who 
called upon him that evening found him writing at his table as 
usual, though with wet cloths bound round his head and arm. The 
assault called forth indignant comments from the press ; but no one 
so well expressed the sense of the country with regard to it as the 
editor of the Albany Knickerbocker, who said: "The fellow who 
would strike Horace G-reeley would strike his mother." 



404 ASSAULTED BY A MEMBER OF CONGRESS. 

Mr. Greeley was censured by a portion of the public for not 
prosecuting the drunken ruf&an who committed this atrocity. He 
gave his reasons for not seeking redress from the law. 

" 1. I do not know this Mr. Rust. I had not the remotest idea 
of his personal appearance up to the moment of his assault on me. 
If he were in court, I think I could identify the man who assaulted 
me beyond doubt; but if I were asked before a grand jury, 'How 
do you know that the man who struck you was Albert Rust, M. C. 
from Arkansas ? ' I could only answer, ' I was so informed by 
those who witnessed the assault,' — and this of itself would not 
be conclusive. I never saw my assailant in the House so as to 
identify him, and he was never but once pointed out to me else- 
where, and then he was walking from me. 

" 2. The complaint against Mr. Rust did not originate with the 
citizens or authorities of Washington. No witness of the assault 
saw fit to make any. Nothing was done until, some two or three 
weeks after the occurrence, a lawyer of this State went to Wash- 
ington and made it. Had I appeared on this complaint as the prin- 
cipal, if not sole witness in its support, I should have been sus- 
pected of having instigated it. I did not choose to rest under that 
imputation. When I see fit to complain of an attack upon me, I 
shall seek no screen. 

" 3. I do not choose to be beaten for money, even though the 
public is to pocket it ; and I know the sentiment of our Federal 
metropolis too well to believe that an anti-slavery editor has any 
chance of substantial justice there, in a prosecution against a 
Southern member of Congress. If the price to be paid for beat- 
ing me is ever to be legally fixed, I choose to have it assessed by 
a Northern jury. 

" 4. I have chosen to treat my assailant throughout in such man- 
ner as to make him ashamed of his assault on me. In this I think 
I have succeeded. For the credit of human nature, I wiU so be- 
lieve." 

In the same year, 1856, the Tribune had the honor to be indicted 
in the State -of Virginia, for advising negroes, as it was alleged, to 
rise in rebellion against their masters. As a curious rehc of that 
bad time, I place this affair on record. In September, 1856, the 
following letters were received at the Tribune office : — 



THE TRIBUNE INDICTED IN VIRGINIA. 405 

" Shinnston, Va., Sept. 26, 1856. 
"Messrs. Greeley & McElrath: — 

" I regret to inform you that I am indicted for getting up a club for the 
Tribune. Great God! has it come to this, that a man must be sent to the 
penitentiary for reading a newspaper? The grand jury had one of the sub- 
scribers brought before them with an armful of copies of the Tribune, and 
they were distributed among them. They examined them a long time, and 
were about giving it up that it would have to pass, when, lo and behold ! one 
of them discovered an extract from the Pittsburg Dispatch, which gave an 
account of the great negro hunt of Ross & Co., and on that they pronounced 
it an Abolition document. The court ordered the jury to meet on Monday 
next, to indict the postmaster at Shinnston. 

" I discover that the law of Virginia makes my case felony. I may have to 
flee, or serve a time in the Richmond Penitentiary. I would like to hear from 
you, whether it is not legal for your paper to circulate in this State. I have 
notified the court that, if they would show some lenity in my case if they 
should decide the said paper to be illegal, I would discontinue my club. 

" W. P. Hall." 

" To the Editor of the N. Y. Tribune. 

" Sir: — The grand jury for this county this week presented Horace Greeley 
of New York, Mr. Hall of Shinnston, and myself of this place, for circulating 
the Tribune. You may make any use of this information you may desire. 
" Yours very truly, 

"Ira Hart. 

" Clarksburg, Harrison County, Va., Oct. 2, 1856." 



The subsequent proceedings were thus related in the Tribune : — 

"Immediately upon the receipt of these letters answers were 
addressed to the writers, expressing the readiness of the con- 
ductors of the Tribune to do their part toward testing the law of 
the case, and desiring copies of the indictments. To the letter 
addressed to Mr. Hall no answer has arrived, and perhaps he never 
received it. We are informed from another quarter that, shortly 
after the finding of the indictment, being greatly alarmed at it, he 
left home. In the mean while, however, it was discovered that the 
grand jury by which the bills were found was illegal, one of its 
members being disquaUfied to sit as a grand juror. As soon as this 
discovery was made another jury was impanelled, which returned 
the indictment, which we shall presently give, against Horace 
Greeley, but omitted to find any against the two citizens of the 
county who had been previously indicted. This, however, does 



406 THE TRIBUNE INDICTED IX VIRGINIA. 

not appear to have been through any disposition to give over the 
persecution of the readers of the Tribune, as vrill appear from the 
following letter of Mr. Hall, addressed to us after his return 

home : — 

" Shinnston, Va., 20th Oct., 1856. 
'* ' Messrs. Greeley & McElrath : — 

"'Since I returned home, I find the storm raging as bad as ever against me. 
They say I shall stop the Tribune club, or they will bring my case up at 
the next Grand Jury Court, and put me clear through. 
" ' I therefore request you to stop the club. 

« * Wm. p. Hall. 
*' ' This from a friend.' 

" So much for Shinnston. Mr. Hart, the other person indicted, a 
resident in Clarksburg, in the same county, appears to be made of 
somewhat sterner stuff. Some time since the postmaster at Clarks- 
burg refused to dehver his paper, under pretence of a law of Vir- 
ginia imposing a fine of $ 200 on any postmaster for dehvering in- 
cendiary mail matter. Mr. Hart thereupon applied to the Post- 
master-G-eneral, who, in performance of his duty, wrote to the 
Clarksburg deputy that he must deliver. This caused a tremen- 
dous stir among the magnates of Clarksburg, but the paper has 
since been regularly delivered. The next move was to indict Mr. 
Hart, as already mentioned; but here too was a legal difficulty, 
which probably prevented the refinding of the indictment. The 
offence, it seems, made felony by the statutes of Virginia, is not 
having in possession or reading incendiary documents, but circulat- 
ing or carrying or procuring them to be circulated ; and as Mr. 
Hart merely took his paper from the post-ofi&ce and read it at 
home, his case did not seem to come under that provision. The 
evidence upon which the first indictment was found was, that he 
had asked some of his neighbors to form a club with him for tak- 
ing the Tribune ; but as no such club was actually formed, it was 
plain that this evidence was not sufficient. 

" We come now to the indictment actually found and now pend 
ing, which is in the words and figures following : — 

" ' Virginia, ss. 
"' In the Circuit Court of Harrison County. 
" ' The grand jurors for said county, on their oaths, present that heretofore, 
to wit, on the 5th day of July, in the year 1856, and from that day to the find- 
ing of this presentment, Horace Greeley did write, print, and publish, and 
cause to be written, printed, and published weekly, in the city of New York 



THE TRIBUNE IXDICTED IN VIRGINIA. 407 

and State of New York, a book and writing, to wit, a newspaper and public 
journal, styled and entitled New York Tribune, the object and purpose of 
which said New York Tribune was to advise and incite negroes in this State 
to rebel and make insurrection, and to inculcate resistance to the rights of 
property of masters in their slaves in the State of Virginia. 

" 'And the jurors do further present that the said Horace Greeley afterward, 
to wit, on the 5th day of July, in the year 1856, did knowingly, wilfully, and 
feloniously transmit to, and circulate in, and cause and procure to be trans- 
mitted to and circulated in the said county of Harrison, the said book and 
writing, to wit, the said New York Tribune, with the intent to aid purposes 
thereof against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth. 

" 'And the jurors aforesaid, upon the oaths aforesaid, do further present that 
said Horace Greeley, on the day of July, in the year 1856, did knowingly, 
unlawfully, and feloniously circulate and cause to be circulated in said coiinty 
of Harrison, a writing, to wit, a newspaper and public journal, which said 
writing, newspaper, and public journal, was on the 5th daj-- of July, in the 
year 1856, published, written, and printed in the city of New York, and State 
of New York, and was styled and entitled New York Tribune, with intent 
in him, the said Greeley, then and there to advise and incite negroes in the 
State of Virginia aforesaid to rebel and make insurrection, and to inculcate 
resistance to the rights of property of masters in their slaves, against the peace 
and dignity of the Commonwealth. 

'"Upon the information of Amaziah Hill and Seymour Johnson, witnesses 
sworn in open court, and sent to the grand jury to testify at the request of 
the grand jury, who had the New York Tribune in the above presentment 
referred to before them, and examined the same. 

" ' B. Wilson, 
Attorney for the Commonwealt'h. 

" Indorsed, ' State v. Horace Greeley. Presentment for felony. A true bill. 

" 'A. J. Garrett, Foreman.'' " 

The Tribune favored its readers with a brief description of the 
persons supposed to be chiefly instrumental in procuring this in- 
dictment : — 

" This G-arrett, we understand, who indorses the indictment as 
foreman, is a Baptist minister — we imagine of the hard-shell or- 
der — who, having got some 'chattels' with his wife, feels him- 
self quite an aristocrat, and by his insolent and overbearing de- 
meanor has secured the hatred of aU his neighbors, over whom in 
his character of slaveholder he enjoys, however, the privilege of 
domineering. Johnson, one of the witnesses, we understand to be 
a vagabond relation of the late Grovernor of Virginia of that name, 
— one of those offshoots of the first families, too lazy and too 



408 A CORRESPONDENCE ON SLAVERY. 

proud to work, but not too proud to sneak behind the waiter into 
complimentary dinners to his relative the Grovernor, into which he 
could get admission in no other way." 

The provocation to such assaults as these upon the Tribune and 
its editor was simply the opposition of that newspaper to every 
scheme devised by the Southern oligarchy to extend the area of 
slavery. Upon looking over the Tribune of those days, the reader 
will find that the tone in which slavery was discussed was emi- 
nently moderate. Nevertheless, it published hundreds of articles 
most damaging to slavery, and did more than all other things to- 
gether to create a party powerful enough to enter the Presidential 
campaign with rational hopes of success. 

From the mass of Mr. Greeley's more personal writings of that 
Deriod room can be found here for one or two specimens : — 



"A CORRESPONDENCE ON SLAVERY. 

" Horace Greeley, Esq. : — 

"Dear Sir: — I live in a warm place for an Abolitionist, — for that is the 
title you are known by here, — and we who take your paper have the same 
application. 

♦' Give us a short sketch — very plain — in regard to the abolition of slavery, 
so that I may show my pro-slavery brethren your platform. 

" Success to your paper ! 

" Albany, Mo., January 18, 1859." 

"REPLY. 

" New York, Jan. 29, 1859. 

"My Dear Sir: — I have yours of the 17th. You ask me why 
the abolition of slavery is deemed desirable. I answer, very 
briefly : — 

" I. Because, in the order of nature, every adult human being has 
a right to use his own G-od-given faculties — muscles, sinews, organs 
— for the sustenance and comfort of himself and his family. Conse- 
quently, it is wrong to divest him of the control of those capacities, 
and render him helplessly subservient to the pleasure and aggran- 
dizement of another, 

" IT, Because the mixture of whites and blacks in the same com- 



A CORRESPONDENCE ON SL4.VERY. 409 

munity, society, household, — an inevitable result of African slavery, 
— is not favorable to the moral purity or social advancement of 
either caste. Better let the two races form separate communities. 

" III. Because the earth should be so cultivated, and the various 
departments of industry so mixed and blended, that every year's 
cultivation should increase, rather than diminish, the productive ca- 
pacities of the soil. Slavery, by placing long distances between 
those who pursue agriculture and manufactures respectively, for- 
bids this, 

" IV. Because the fullest cultivation of his intellect, through edu- 
cation, reading, study, &c., is the right of every rational being. 
In the Divine economy, this would seem one of the main rea- 
sons for placing men on earth. Slavery is incompatible with such 
cultivation, forbidding its subjects even to read or write. 

" V. Slavery is palpably at war with the fundamental basis of our 
government, — the inalienable rights of man. It is a chief obsta- 
cle to the progress of republican institutions throughout the world. 
It is a standing reproach to our country abroad. It is the cause 
of exultation and joy on the side of the armed despots. It is worth 
more to the Austrian and French tyrants than an additional army 
of 100,000 men. 

"VI. Slavery is the chief cause of dissension and hatred among 
ourselves. It keeps us perpetually divided, jealous, hostile. If it 
were abolished, we should never dream of fighting each other, nor 
dissolving the Union. 

"VII. Slavery powerfully aids to keep in power the most thor- 
oughly unprincipled party, the most corrupt demagogues, that our 
country has ever known. 

" VIII. Slavery makes a few rich, but sinks the great mass, even 
of the free, into indolence, depravity, and misery. It prevents the 
accumulation of wealth. It renders land a drug, and keeps popu- 
lation so sparse and scattered that common schools are for the 
most part impossible. 

" For these and other reasons, I am among those who labor and 
hope for the early and complete abohtion of human, but especially 
of American slavery. " Yours, 

"Horace G-reeley. 

W. C. Cowan, Esq., Albany, G-entry County, Mo." 



410 CORKESPONDEXCE Witn A SLAVEHOLDER. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH A SLAVEHOLDER. 

"INVITATION TO BUY A SLAVE. 

" , Va., March 7, 1857. 

"Mr. Horace Greeley: — 

" I offer no apology for this communication. You claim to be a philan- 
thropist, and you are, notoriously, a champion of African slaves. I propose, 
simplj'- and in good faith, to afford you an opportunity of giving (to the world, 
if you please) a practical illustration of the philanthropy you preach. 

"I know a slave who is fit to be free. He is intelligent, — able to read and 
write and make up accounts in a small way, — is a good carpenter and 
cabinet-maker, — an honest man and a consistent member of a Christian 
church. For some years this slave hired himself, paid his owner a full 
price for his time, laid up money, and bought his slave-wife and their 
younger children. Two of their older children are still slaves. 

" The owner of this man has offered to sell him to me, at the slave's request; 
but I am not able to buy him, nor would I if I were able. 

" I suppose that $ 4,500 would buy the man and his two slave sons, and re- 
move the family to a Free State. It has occurred to me that you may be 
able, or may know somebody who is able, to spare this sum of money for so 
good a purpose. It would give me pleasure to aid in the matter, by pur- 
chasing the slaves, emancipating them, and attending to their removal; and I 
invite you to a correspondence on the subject. 

" If you want any knowledge of me you may refer to [here the writer inserts 
the names of several well-known and distinguished persons, which we omit], 
or any of the editors at Richmond. 

" I can give you any desirable security for the ftiithful application of the 
funds. 

" I ought to have stated that these negroes are of nearly pure white blood, — 
the wife a woman of excellent character, and the children handsome and 
sprightly. 

" I am, perhaps, as far from any sympathy with Abolitionists as you are 
from sympathy with slaveholders. I own slaves, and expect to own them 
during my life. Knowing something of the matter by personal experience, I 
am a better judge of it than you can be; and I take the opportunity of saying 
to you, that you and your coadjutors- are the worst enemies of the slave. 
They are, by great odds, in a happier condition than your white slaves ; but, 
like all other human beings, may be made discontented with their lot. You 
excite them to discontent, then to insubordination; and thus you make it 
necessary for us to rule them more rigidly. Let us alone, Mr. Greeley. 

" Why, then, you may ask, do I care about emancipating this particulai 
family? I say, because they are almost white people; they are partly 
educated, are industrious, moral, and Christian, and arejitted for freedom. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH A SLAVEHOLDER. 411 

" I know hundreds of slaves; I do not know one dozen who are fit to be free. 
I know scores of free negroes ; but, with a very few exceptions, they are more 
ignorant, immoral, and degraded than our slaves. 

'* This letter is not for publication. 

" Your obedient servant, 



"REPLY. 

" New York, March 11, 1857. 

" My Dear Sir : — I have yours of the 7th inst,, which com- 
mences with a great mistake : ' You profess to be a philanthropist.' 
I make no such profession, — very few professions of any kind. 
The world judges me as it sees fit from my acts ; I silently abide 
its verdict. 

" If I can only deserve the reputation of a philanthropist by buy- 
ing out of slavery such negroes, ' almost white,' as the masters be- 
lieve unfit to be longer slaves, then I have no desire to earn that 
title. So far from inclining to buy them, I do not wish this par- 
ticular class bought or otherwise emancipated, while the great mass 
of their brethren remain in bondage. On the contrary, I wish them 
to remain where they are, looking their white uncles and cousins 
in the face, a perpetual reminder of the infernal system of which 
they are victims, and of the iniquities which, even in the judg- 
ment of slaveholders, may be and are perpetrated under it. Ko, 
sir, I hate slavery too deeply to help drug the consciences of your 
caste by buying out of slavery those whom even you say are fit no 
longer to be bondmen. 

" Your request to 'let you alone ' in the Slave States I shall duly 
respect; I ask your members of Congress and Supreme Court 
judges to do likewise by us. Your Nebraska bills and Dred Scott 
decisions, forcing slavery upon the Free States in spite of them- 
selves, are goading us beyond the point of peacefiil endurance. 
"Yours, 

"Horace Greeley. 

"To , Ya. 

"P. S. — I will print your letter, so that any one North or South, 
who wishes to do what you ask of me, may have the opportu- 
nity." 



412 SLAVERY AND LABOR. 



SLAVERY AND LABOR. 



" A humble farmer's son, upon the granite hills of New England, 
early impelled and inured to rugg.ed and persistent toil, I learned 
not merely to confront labor, but to respect it, and to recognize in 
its stern exactions, its harsh discipline, one of the most precious 
and vital of the countless blessings which Heaven sends us dis- 
guised as afflictions, as judgments, or at least as trials. I learned 
to realize the divine benignity underlying and animating the sen- 
tence passed on our common ancestors as the penalty of the first 
transgression ; I learned to feel that in the world we inhabit,_and 
with such faculties, appetites, and passions as make up that super- 
lative paradox called Man, the denunciation, ' In the sweat of thy 
face shalt thou eat bread,' was in fact our necessary, vital safeguard 
against falling into the lowest abysses of depravity and misery. 
Only through the inexorable requirement of industry has our race 
— or, more strictly, some part of it — ever risen in the scale of 
moral being ; and this only where such necessity was urgent and 
palpable. Not on the bleak crests and amid the icy gorges of 
wind-swept mountains, but in unctuous, sunny vales, amid trop- 
ical verdure and luxuriance, have the darker aspects of human in- 
firmity been developed ; not unmeaning was the first great visita- 
tion of human wickedness by deluge, which covered soonest the 
low intervales, the deltas of rivers, and seaside glades, so rich in 
corn and cattle, so fertile also in pride and sin. Sodom and G-o- 
morrah, Herculaneum and Pompeii, Catania, Caracas, and a hun- 
dred other victims of some gigantic outpouring of judgment, unite 
in attesting that where least labor is required to satisfy his physical 
needs, there is man's moral raggedness most flagrant and repulsive. 
No well-informed naturalist need be told that Iceland is more moral 
than Madagascar; he finds this fact graven on the earth, foreor- 
dained through eternal and immutable laws. And it is not too 
much to say, that, if the doom of Adam could be so far remitted 
that all man's primary and inexorable wants should henceforth be 
satisfied without labor on his part, there is no power on earth that 
could save him from sinking, gradually but inevitably, into a bru- 
tish and debauched Australian or Patagonian barbarism. 

" Our primitive conceptions of integrity are derived from work. 
As a problem is something to be proved or tested, so probity is 



SLAVERY AND LABOR. 418 

cliaracter that has been subjected to the ordeal and has stood the 
test, — in other words, is integrity proved. All the processes of 
industry, all the operations of Nature, imply honesty and truth. If 
any man ever made bass-wood seeds, he certainly made them to 
sell, not to plant ; and no knave ever imagined that he could hood- 
wink or dupe Nature by the semblance of service without the real- 
ity. The ploughman is always honest toward her, for he holds his 
livelihood by the tenor of such fidelity : it is only when he ceases 
to be a producer, and appears in the radically different attitude of a 
trader, or vender of his products, that he is tempted to be a knave. 
All Nature's processes are hearty, earnest, thorough ; and man, if 
he would aid, direct, or profit by her evolutions, must approach 
her with frank sincerity. Hence, I hold that no man ever really 
loved work and was content to live by it who was not essentially 
honest and upright, and did not tend to become day by day more 
manly and humane. 

" This very hour, the lumbermen of the Ottawa are driving the 
first approaches of persistent civilization to a point nearer the pole 
than was ever before attained on this eastern slope of our conti- 
nent. Among the pines of the Aroostook, the Saginaw, the Wis- 
consin, the Minnesota, the axes of the woodmen are hewing out 
the timbers of many a stately edifice, which a coming summer shall 
see rise among the shrines of traffic by the far shores of the Atlan- 
tic Ocean. To-day, for the first time since the flood, is the sun let 
in upon spot after spot in the great Western wilderness, on which 
a rude cabin shall emerge from amid smoke and stumps next sum- 
mer, — a warm hearth-stone within, and sturdy, fair-haired chil- 
dren playing around it. Pass a few years more, and that little dot 
of blackened clearing will have gradually eaten away the encircling 
woods, and given a hand to the newer adjacent clearings on either 
side ; and soon commodious dwellings, fair villages, the hum of 
steady, prosperous industry, and all the manifestations of civilized 
life wiU have supplanted the howl of the wolf and all the sulkm in- 
fluences of perpetual shade. Around no Silistria or Sevastopol, in 
no Crimea or Dobrodja, is the drama of man's life-struggle being 
enacted, but in the freshly trodden wilds of Iowa and Minnesota, 
on the rolling prairies of Kansas, in the far glens of Utah, and along 
the great future highway across the continent, where California 
beckons to her Eastern sisters, and points them to the wealth and 



414 SLAVERY AN» LABOR. 

work which stretch beyond her, and across the great Pacific and 
among the isles of the Indian tropic. Not with the sword, but 
with tlie axe, does man hew out his path to a higher and purer 
civihzation ; and the measure of his present attainment is his re- 
gard for the humble and untinselled, but mighty and beneficent arts 
of peace. 

" Can it be wondered, then, that I, a child of many generations 
of cotters and drudging delvers, should ponder and dream over 
THE ELEVATION OF LABOR to Something like the dignity and esteem 
which its merits and its utility demand ? What can be more nat- 
ural than that I should ask whether this fair and stately structure 
of society, wherein we are so amply sheltered and shielded, must 
always rest heavily on those by whom its foundations were laid 
and its walls erected? If a peer may without reproach /stand by 
his order,' why may not a peasant as well? 

"For still, to the earnest vision, the condition of the worker — 
even in this favored region — is a rugged and hard one. He is not 
respected by others ; he too often does not respect himself. Work- 
ing in the main either because he must work or starve, or in order 
that he may be raised above the necessity of working, he does not 
accept labor as a benignantly appointed destiny, but as a vindic- 
tively denounced penalty which he must endure as unmurmuringly 
and finish as speedily as possible. Happiness in the vulgar con- 
ception being compounded of idleness and the most unlimited grati- 
fication of the sensual appetites, and this happiness being the ' end 
and aim ' of every earthly eflfort, it is inevitable that the worker 
should be regarded alike by himself and by others as one who has 
thus far failed, and who is therefore obnoxious to the stigma which 
the common mind ever affixes to the unsuccessfiil. 

" The institution of human slavery appears to me the logical cul- 
mination and result of the popular ideas respecting labor; for if 
labor be essentially and necessarily an infliction, a penalty, a curse, 
then it is but human nature that each should endeavor to do as 
little of it as possible. If the obhgation to work be a bolt of 
Divine wrath, then it is to be expected that man should seek to 
interpose some other body between his dodging head and the ce- 
lestial vengeance. Teach a child that labor is not a good to be ac- 
cepted and improved, but an evil to be shunned and shirked, and 
you have impelled him far on the road to the slave-jockey's pen aa 
a cheapener and customer. 



SLAVERY AND LABOR. 415 

" I do not marvel, then, that slavery has so long cursed the earth ; 
I see clearly that it could not have failed to do so. To the pre- 
mise that labor is an evil to be shunned so far as possible add the 
assumption that war and conquest are legitimate, and slavery fol- 
lows of course. I have vanquished my enemy in battle, and have 
a right to kill him ; but that would be too costly and transient a 
gratification, when I can save him to take my place in the field or 
the shop; to receive that share of the primal curse which was 
providentially intended for me; to be my substitute in all cases 
where I would rather not perform a duty in person, and the butt 
of my ill-humor, whenever, through his fault, or mine, or neither, 
my plans miscarry, and my hopes are blasted by defeat. My slave 
or captive, having been spared by my clemency, and living only at 
my mercy, owes me boundless obedience and service, while I owe 
him nothing but such food and clothing as will keep him alive and 
in condition to perform that service. I have become to him Church, 
State, and Providence, — Law, Conscience, and Divinity, — and he 
can only go amiss by disobeying my commands. If he have wife 
or children, they too are mine, or his only in subordination to my 
interests and my will ; those children would not have been but for 
my clemency ; they too owe everything to me, and must hve only 
for my convenience, advantage, and profit. Thus the system ac- 
quires a self-perpetuating quahty, and may endure, even without 
fresh wars and subjugations, to the end of time. And, so far as 
the enslaver can realize, it is a most convenient and satisfactory 
system, — supplying him with hands to do his work, feet to run 
his errands, eyes to watch and arms to guard his possessions, and 
ready ministers to every whim or lust. 

"But though eternal laws may thus, in one sense, be defied, 
their penalties cannot be evaded. The stern Nemesis is ever close 
on the heels of the transgressor. A household of masters and 
slaves, of sacrificers and victims, can never be a loving and happy 
home. It includes too many crushed aspirations, outraged sensi- 
bilities, unavenged wrongs. The children of both master and slave 
are in false positions : the former necessarily grow up self-wiUed, 
overbearing, indolent; the latter, abject, servile, false, and devoid 
of self-respect. Vainly shall the master seek, in such a presence, 
to imbue his children with lessons of industry, humility, and defer- 
ence ; for to every such lesson the ready response will be : ' What 
are slaves /or, if not to minister to our convenience and enjoyment? 



416 SLAVERY AND LABOR. 

If we are to work, to be frugal, to wait upon ourselves, why should 
we endure the presence, the low moral development, the care and 
responsibility, of these Helots ? If we do all for ourselves at least 
give us opportunity, give us room ! ' The moment a master re- 
solves to square his life and that of his family by the golden rule, 
the presence and direction of a lot of stupid, sensual, indolent slaves 
is felt to be a nuisance and a burden. 

"And, while it is true that slavery is the logical consequence, 
the Corinthian capital, of the popular notions respecting labor, it is 
none the less certain that the arts — which flourish where the la- 
borer is free from any constraint but that of his own aspirations, 
appetites, and needs — flicker and die out where slavery bears 
sway. In our own sunny South — answering to the Italy, Greece, 
Asia Minor, and Carthage of the Old World — there is the best of 
ship-timber, yet the cotton and tobacco there grown seek distant 
markets, in Northern vessels, sailed by sons of New England, and 
manned by Yankee crews. Northern merchants and clerks fill 
their seaports and buy their crops ; Northern teachers instruct their 
children, so far as they are taught at all ; their time is measured by 
Yankee clocks, and their tables set w^th Northern or European 
dishes; in short, about the only trophy of human genius peculiar 
to the Southrons is the cotton-gin, which they stole from Whit- 
ney, a Yankee. And every one who has travelled or Hved there 
must be conscious that life is far ruder and poorer among the 
planters than in the corresponding class in any non-slaveholding 
region of the civilized world ; and that, beyond a bountiful supply 
of coarse and ill-cooked food, the majority of Southern homes are 
devoid of nearly everything which civihzed men consider essential 
to the comfort of life. 

" Do I state these facts with a feehng of exultation ? Surely not. 
I state them only to enforce the vital truth that man must create 
IN ORDER TO ENJOY. He must producc, if he would find pleasure in 
consuming ; must do good to others, in order to secure good to 
himself. In other words, work is not a curse to be escaped, but a 
blessing to be accepted and improved. If every freeman now on 
earth were offered a dozen slaves, I fear nine tenths know no better 
than to accept ; yet, I feel sure, also, that, simply as a question of 
personal loss and gain, it would be better for any one of them to be 
burned out of house and home than to receive such a Trojan horse 
into his keeping.'' 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA. 

Farewell to civilization— The bufialoes on the Plains — Conversation with Brigham Young 
—Remarks upon polygamy— Visit to the Yo Semite Valley — ^Reception at Sacramento 
— at San Francisco. 

In the summer of 1859 Mr. G-reeley made his celebrated journey 
across the Plains to Cahfornia, the particulars of which, according 
to his custom, he related to his readers. The manner in which he 
announced his purpose was characteristic : " About the 1st of Oc- 
ber next we are to have a State election ; then a city contest ; then 
the organization and long session of a new Congress ; then a Presi- 
dential struggle; then Congress again; which brings us to the 
forming of a new national administration and the summer of 1861. 
If, therefore, I am to have any respite from editorial labor for the 
next two years I must take it now." So on the 9th of May, 1859, 
he left New York for a trip across the continent. 

From his letters and other sources I glean a few of the more 
pecuhar and interesting incidents. 

HIS FAREWELL TO CIVILIZATION AT PIKE's PEAK. 

" I believe I have now descended the ladder of artificial life 
nearly to its lowest round. If the Cheyennes — thirty of whom 
stopped the last express down on the route we must traverse, and 
tried to beg or steal from it — should see fit to capture and strip 
us, we should of course have further experience in the same line ; 
but for the present the progress I have made during the last fort- 
night toward the primitive simplicity of human existence may be 
roughly noted thus : — 

"May 12th, Chicago. — Chocolate and morning newspapers last 
Reen on the breakfast-table. 

" 23d, Leavenworth. — Room-bells and baths make their last ap- 
pearance. 

" 24i^, Topeka. — Beefsteak and washbowls (other than tin) last 
visible. Barber ditto. 

27 417 



,418 ACROSS THE PLAI^^fS TO CALIFORNIA. 

" 2Qt7i, Manhattan. — Potatoes and eggs last recognized among 
the blessings that ^ brighten as they take their flight.' Chairs ditto. 

^^ 27th, Junction City. — Last visitation of a bootblack, with dis- 
solving views of a board bedroom. Chairs bid us good by. 

"28/A, Pipe Creek. — Benches for seats at meals have disap- 
peared, giving place to bags and boxes. We (two passengers of a 
scribbhng turn) write our letters in the express wagon that has 
borne us by day, and must supply us lodgings for the night. Thun- 
der and lightning from both south and west give strong promise of 
a shower before morning. Dubious looks at several holes in the 
canvas covering of the wagon. Our trust is in buoyant hearts and 
an India-rubber blanket." 

HE SEES THE BUFFALO. 

"All day yesterday they darkened the earth around us, often 
seeming to be drawn up Hke an army in battle array on the ridges 
and adown their slopes a mile or so south of us, — often on the 
north as well. They are rather shy of the Uttle screens of strag- 
gling timber on the creek bottoms, — doubtless from their sore ex- 
perience of Indians lurking therein to discharge arrows at them as 
they went down to drink. If they feed in the grass of the narrow 
valleys and ravines, they are careful to have a part of the herd on 
the ridges which overlook them, and with them the surrounding 
country for miles. And when an alarm is given, they all rush 
furiously off in the direction which the leaders presume that of 
safety. 

" This is what gives us such excellent opportunities for regarding 
them to the best advantage. They are moving northward, and are 
still mainly south of our track. Whenever alarmed, they set off on 
their awkward but effective canter to the great herds still south, or 
to haunts with which they are comparatively familiar, and wherein 
they have hitherto found safety. Of course this sends those north 
of us across our way, often but a few rods in front of us, even when 
they had started a mile away. Then a herd will commence run- 
ning across a hundred rods ahead of us, and, the whole blindly fol- 
lowing their leader, we will be close upon them before the last will 
have cleared the track. Of course they sometimes stop and tack, 
or seeing us, sheer off and cross farther ahead, or split into two 



HE SEES THE BUFFALO. 419 

lines ; but the general impulse, when alarmed, is to follow bhndly 
and at fall speed, seeming not to inquire or consider from what 
quarter danger is to be apprehended. 

" What strikes the stranger with most amazement is their immense 
numbers. I know a million is a great many, but I am confident 
we saw that number yesterday. Certainly, all we saw could not 
have stood on ten square miles of ground. Often the country for 
miles on either hand seemed quite black with them. The soil is 
rich, and well matted with their favorite grass. Yet it is all (ex- 
cept a very little on the creek bottoms, near to timber) eaten down 
like an overtaxed sheep-pasture in a dry August. Consider that 
we have traversed more than one hundred miles in width since we 
first struck them, and that for most of this distance the buflfalo have 
been constantly in sight, and that they continue for some twenty- 
five miles farther on, — this being the breadth of their present range, 
which has a length of perhaps a thousand miles, and you have some 
approach to an idea of their countless millions. I doubt whether 
the domesticated horned cattle of the United States equal the num- 
bers, while they must fall considerably short in weight, of these 
wild ones. Margaret Fuller long ago observed that the Illinois 
prairies seemed to repel the idea of being new to civilized life and 
industry; that they, with their borders of trees and belts of tim- 
ber, reminded the traveller rather of the parks and spacious fields 
of an old country like England ; that you were constantly on the 
involuntary lookout for the chateaux, or at least the humbler farm- 
houses, which should diversify such a scene. Tru^ as this is or 
was in Elinois, the resemblance is far more striking here, where the 
grass is all so closely pastured and the cattle are seen in such vast 
herds on every ridge. The timber, too, aids the resemblance, seem- 
ing to have been reduced to the last degree consistent with the 
wants of a grazing country, and to have been left only on the steep 
creek-banks where grass would not grow. It is hard to reahze 
that this is the centre of a region of wilderness and solitude, so far 
as the labors of civilized man are concerned, — that the first wagon 
passed through it some two months ago. But the utter absence of 
houses or buildings of any kind, and our unbridged, unworked 
road, winding on its way for hundreds of miles, without a track 
other than of buflfalo intersecting or leading away from it on either 
hand, brings us back to the reahty. 



420 ACROSS THE PLAflSTS TO CALIFORNIA. 

"I shall pass lightly over the hunting exploits of our party. A 
good many shots have been fired, — of course not by me ; even were 
I in the habit of making war on wild Nature's children, I would as 
soon think of shooting my neighbor's oxen as these great, clumsy, 
harmless creatures. If they were scarce, I might comprehend the 
idea of hunting them for sport; here, they are so abundant that 
you might as well hunt your neighbor's geese. And, while there 
have been several shots fired by our party at point-blank distances, 
I have reason for my hope that no buffalo has experienced any per- 
sonal inconvenience therefrom." 

HE ALSO HAS A TASTE OF THE ELEPHANT. 

" Two evenings since, just as we were nearing Station 17, where 
we were to stop for the night, my fellow-passenger and I had a 
jocular discussion on the gulHes into which we were so frequently 
plunged, to our personal discomfort. He premised that it was a 
consolation that the sides of these guUies could not be worse than 
perpendicular: to which I replied with the assertion that they 
could be and were ; for instance, where a gully, in addition to its 
perpendicular descent, had an inclination of forty-five degrees or so 
to one side the track. Just then a violent lurch of the wagon to 
one side, then to the other, in descending one of these jolts, en- 
forced my position. Two minutes later, as we were about to de- 
scend the steep bank of the creek intervale, the mules acting per- 
versely, my friend stepped out to take them by the head, leaving 
me alone in the wagon. Just then we began to descend the steep 
pitch, the driver pulling up with all his might, when the left rein 
of the leaders broke, and the team was in a moment sheered out of 
the road and ran diagonally down the pitch. In a second, the 
wagon went over, hitting the ground a most spiteful blow. I, of 
course, went over with it; and when I rose to my feet, as soon as 
possible, considerably bewildered and dishevelled, the mules had 
been disengaged by the upset, and were making good time across 
the prairie, while the driver, considerably hurt, was getting out from 
under the carriage to limp after them. I had a slight cut on my 
left cheek, and a worse one below the left knee, with a pretty smart 
concussion generally, but not a bone started nor a tendon strained, 
and I walk,ed away to the station as firmly as ever, leaving the 
superintendent and my fellow-passenger to pick up the pieces, and 



HE CONVERSES WITH BRIGHAM YOUNG. 421 

guard the baggage from the Indians, who instantly swarmed about 
the wreck. I am sore yet, and a httle lame, but three or four days' 
rest — if I can ever get it — will make all right." 

HE ENCOUNTERS AN OLD ENEMY. 

" Of the seventeen bags on which I have ridden for the last four 
days, at least sixteen are filled with large bound books, mainly 
Patent Office Reports, I judge, but all of them undoubtedly works 
ordered printed at the public cost — your cost, reader! — by Con- 
gress, and now on their way to certain favored Mormons, franked 
(by proxy) 'Pub. Doc. Free, J. M. Bernhisel, M. C I do not 
blame Mr. B. for clutching his share of this public plunder, and 
distributing it so as to increase his own popularity and impor- 
tance ; but I do protest against this business of printing books by 
wholesale at the cost of the whole people, for free distribution to a 
part only. It is every way wrong and pernicious. Of the $ 190,000 
per annum paid for carrying the Salt Lake mail, nine tenths is ab- 
sorbed in the cost of carrying these franked documents to people 
who contribute little or nothing to the support of the government 
in any way. Is this fair ? Each Patent Office Report will have 
cost the Treasury four or five dollars by the time it reaches its des- 
tination, and will not be valued by the receiver at twenty-five 
cents. Why should this business go on? Why not 'reform it 
altogether'? Let Congress print whatever documents are needed 
for its own information, and leave the people to choose and buy for 
themselves ? I have spent four days and five nights in close con- 
tact with the sharp edges of Mr. Bernhisel's 'Pub. Doc.'; have 
done my very utmost to make them present a smooth, or at least 
endurable surface; and I am sure there is no slumber to be ex- 
tracted therefrom unless by reading them, — a desperate resort 
which no rational person would recommend. For aU practical pur- 
poses they might as well — now that the printer has been paid for 
them — be where I heartily wish they were, — in the bottom of 
the sea." 

HE CONVERSES WITH BRIGHAM YOUNG. 

** My friend, Dr. Bernhisel, M. C, took me this afternoon, by ap- 
pointment, to meet Brigham Young, President of the Mormon 



422 ACROSS THE PLAIN§ TO CALIFORNIA. 

Cliurch, who had expressed a willingness to receive me at 2, P. l^L 
We were very cordially welcomed at the door by the President, 
who led us into the second-story parlor of the largest of his houses 
(he has three), where I was introduced to Heber C. Kimball, Gen- 
eral Wells, General Ferguson, Albert Carrington, Elias Smith, and 
several other leading men in the Church, with two full-grown sons 
of the President. After some unimportant conversation on general 
topics, I stated that I had come in quest of fuller knowledge re- 
specting the doctrines and polity of the Mormon Church, and would 
like to ask some questions bearing directly on these, if there were 
no objection. President Young avowing his willingness to respond 
to all pertinent inquiries, the conversation proceeded substantially 
as follows : — 

" //. G. Am I to regard Mormonism (so called) as a new rehgion, 
or as simply a new development of Christianity ? 

"i?. Y. We hold that there can be no true Christian Church with- 
out a priesthood directly commissioned by and in immediate com- 
munication with the Son of God and Saviour of mankind. Such a 
church is that of the Latter-Day Saints, called by their enemies 
Mormons ; we know no other that even pretends to have present 
and direct revelations of God's wiU. 

" H. G. Then I am to understand that you regard all other 
churches professing to be Christian as the Church of Rome regards all 
churches not in communion with itself, — as schismatic, heretical, 
and out of the way of salvation ? 

"5. Y. Yes, substantially. 

" H. G. Apart from this, in what respect do your doctrines differ 
essentially from those of our orthodox Protestant Churches, — the 
Baptist or Methodist, for example ? 

"5. Y. We hold the doctrines of Christianity as revealed in the 
Old and New Testaments, also in the Book of Mormon, which 
teaches the same cardinal truths, and those only. 

" H. G. Do you believe in the doctrine of the Trinity ? 

"B. Y. We do; but not exactly as it is held by other churches. 
We believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as equal, 
but not identical, — not as one person [being]. We beheve in all 
the Bible teaches on this subject. 

" H. G. Do you beheve in a personal Devil, a distinct, conscious, 
spiritual being, whose nature and acts are essentially mahgnant and 
evH? 



HE CONVERSES WITH BRIGHAM YOUNG. 423 

"5. Y. We do. 

"H. G. Do you hold the doctrine of eternal punishment? 

"5. Y We do; though perhaps not exactly as other churches 
do. We believe it as the Bible teaches it. 

" H. G. I understand that you regard baptism by immersion as 
essential. 

"5. r. We do. 

"/^. G. Do you practise infant baptism? 

"5. Y. No. 

" H. G. Do you make removal to these valleys obhgatory on your 
converts ? 

"^. Y. They would consider themselves greatly aggrieved if they 
were not invited hither. We hold to such a gathering together of 
God's people as the Bible foretells, and that this is the place, and 
now is the time appointed for its consummation. 

^'- H. G. The predictions to which you refer have usually, I think, 
been understood to indicate Jerusalem (or Judaea) as the place of 
such gathering. 

" B. Y. Yes, for the Jews ; not for others. 

"IT. G. What is the position of your Church with respect to 
slavery ? 

"-B, Y. We consider it of Divine institution, and not to be abol- 
ished until the curse pronounced on Ham shall have been removed 
from his descendants. 

" H. G. Are any slaves now held in this Territory ? 

" B. Y. There are. 

"H. G. Do your Territorial laws uphold slavery? 

"B. Y. Those laws are printed, you can read for yourself. If 
slaves are brought here by those who owned them in the States, 
we do not favor their escape from the service of those owners. 

"H. G. Am I to infer that Utah, if admitted as a member of the 
Federal Union, will be a slave State? 

"5. Y. No ; she will be a free State. Slavery here would prove 
useless and unprofitable. I regard it generally as a curse to the 
masters. I myself hire many laborers, and pay them fair wages ; I 
could not afford to own them. I can do better than subject myself 
to an obligation to feed and clothe their families, to provide and 
care for them in sickness and health. Utah is not adapted to slave 
labor. 



424 ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA. 

'' H. G. Let me now be enlightened with regard more especially 
to your Church polity. I understand that you require each mem- 
ber to pay over one tenth of all he produces or earns to the Church. 

"5. Y. That is a requirement of our faith. There is no compul- 
sion as to the payment. Each member acts in the premises accord- 
ing to his pleasure, under the dictates of his own conscience. 

"^. G. What is done with the proceeds of this tithing? 

"5. Y. Part of it is devoted to building temples and other places 
of worship ; part to helping the poor and needy converts on their 
way to this country; and the largest portion to the support of the 
poor among the Saints. 

" H. G. Is none of it paid to bishops and other dignitaries of the 
Church? 

" B. Y. Not one penny. No bishop, no elder, no deacon, or other 
church officer, receives any compensation for his ofl&cial services. 
A bishop is often required to put his hand in his own pocket and 
provide therefrom for the poor of his charge ; but he never receives 
anything for his services. 

" H. G. How, then, do your ministers Hve ? 

'•'■ B. Y. By the labor of their own hands, like the first Apostles. 
Every bishop, every elder, may be daily seen at work in the field 
or the shop, like his neighbors; every minister of the Church has 
his proper calling by which he earns the bread of his family; he 
who cannot or will not do the Church's work for nothing is not 
wanted in her service ; even our lawyers (pointing to G-eneral Fer- 
guson and anotlier present, who are the regular lawyers of the 
Church) are paid nothing for their services; I am the only person 
in the Church who has not a regular calling apart from the Church's 
service, and I never received one farthing from her treasury ; if I 
obtain, anything from the tithing-house, I am charged with and 
pay for it, just as any one else would; the clerks in the ti thing- 
store are paid like other clerks, but no one is ever paid for any ser- 
vice pertaining to the ministry. We think a man who cannot make 
his living aside from the ministry of Christ unsuited to that office. 
I am called rich, and consider myself worth $ 250,000 ; but no dol- 
lar of it was ever paid me by the Church, or for any service as a 
minister of the everlasting G-ospel. I lost nearly all I had when we 
were broken up in Missouri and driven from that State. I was 
nearly stripped again when Joseph Smith was murdered and we 



HE CONVERSES WITH BRIGHAM YOUNG. 425 

were driven from Illinois; but nothing was ever made up to me by 
the Church, nor by any one. . I believe I know how to acquire 
property, and how to take care of it. 

" H. G. Can you give me any rational explanation of the aversion 
and hatred with which your people are generally regarded by those 
among whom they have lived and with whom they have been 
brought directly in contact? 

"i?. Y. No other explanation than is afforded by the crucifixion 
of Christ and the kindred treatment of Grod's ministers, prophets, 
and saints in all ages. 

" H. G. I knoAV that a new sect is always decried and traduced ; 
that it is hardly ever deemed respectable to belong to one; that the 
Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, Universalists, &c., have each in their 
turn been regarded in the infancy of their sect as the offscouring of 
the earth ; yet I cannot remember that either of them were ever 
generally represented and regarded by the older sects of their early 
days as thieves, robbers, murderers. 

" B. Y. If you will consult the contemporary Jewish accounts of 
the hfe and acts of Jesus Christ, you wiU fiiid that he and his dis- 
ciples were accused of every abominable deed and purpose, — rob- 
bery and murder included. Such a work is still extant, and may 
be found by those who seek it. 

" H. G. What do you say of the so-called Danites, or Destroy- 
ing Angels, belonging to your Church? 

" B. Y. What do you say ? I know of no such band, no such per- 
sons or organization. I hear of them only in the slanders of our 
enemies. 

" H. G. With regard, then, to the grave question on which your 
doctrines and practices are avowedly at war with those of the 
Christian world, — that of a plurality of wives, — is the system of 
your Church acceptable to the majority of its women? 

" B. Y. They could not be more averse to it than I was when it 
was first revealed to us as the Divine will. I think they generally 
accept it, as I do, as the will of G-od. 

" H. G. How general is polygamy among you ? 

"^. Y. I could not say. Some of those present [heads of the 
Church] have each but one wife; bthers have more; each deter- 
mines what is his individual duty. 

" U. G. What is the largest number of wives belonging to any 
one man? 



426 ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA. 

'^ B. Y. I have fifteen; I know no one who has more; but some 
of those sealed to me are old ladies whom I regard rather as moth- 
ers than wives, but whom I have taken home to cherish and support. 
"^. G. Does not the Apostle Paul say that a bishop should be 
' the husband of one wife ' ? 

"^. Y. So we hold. We do not regard any but a married man 
as fitted for the office of bishop. But the apostle does not forbid a 
bishop having more wives than one. 

"iy. G. Does not Christ say that he who puts away his wife, or 
marries one whom another has put away, commits adultery ? 

''5. Y. Yes ; and I hold that no man should ever put away a wife 
except for adultery, — not always even for that. Such is my indi- 
vidual view of the matter. I do not say that wives have never 
been put away in our Church, but that I do not approve of the 
practice. 

" jy. G. How do you regard what is commonly termed the Chris- 
tian Sabbath? 

"5. Y. As a divinely appointed day of rest. We enjoin all to rest 
from secular labor on that day. We would have no man enslaved 
to the Sabbath, but we enjoin all to respect and enjoy it." 

HIS OPINION OF POLYGAMY. 

" I have enjoyed opportunities for visiting Mormons, and study- 
ing Mormonism in the homes of its votaries, and of discussing with 
tliem what the outside world regards as its distinguishing feature, 
in the freedom of friendly social intercourse. In one instance, a 
veteran apostle of the faith, having first introduced to me a worthy 
matron of fifty-five or sixty — the wife of his youth and the 
mother of his grown-up sons — as Mrs. T., soon after introduced a 
young and winning lady, of perhaps twenty-five summers, in these 
words : ' Here is another Mrs. T.' This lady is a recent emigrant 
from our State, of more than average powers of mind and graces 
of person, who came here with her brother, as a convert, a little 
over a year ago, and has been the sixth wife of Mr. T. since a few 
weeks after her arrival. (The intermediate four wives of Elder T. 
live on a farm or farms some miles distant.) The manner of the 
husband was perfectly unconstrained and off-hand throughout ; but 
I could not well be mistaken in my conviction that both ladies failed 
to conceal dissatisfaction with their position in the eyes of their 



HIS OPINION OF POLYGAMY. 427 

visitor and of the world. They seemed to feel that it needed vin- 
dication. Their manner toward each other was most cordial and 
sisterly, — sincerely so, I doubt not, — but this is by no means the 
rule. A Gentile friend, whose duties require him to travel widely 
over the Territory, informs me that he has repeatedly stopped with 
a Bishop, some hundred miles south of this, whose two wives he 
has never known to address each other, or evince the sHghtest cor- 
diality, during the hours he has spent in their society. The Bish- 
op's house consists of two rooms ; and when my informant stayed 
there with a G-entile friend, the Bishop being absent, one wife slept 
in the same apartment with them, rather than in that occupied by 
her double. I presume that an extreme case, but the spirit which 
impels it is not unusual. I met this evening a large party of young 
people, consisting in nearly equal numbers of husbands and wives; 
but no husband was attended by more than one wife, and no gen- 
tleman admitted or implied, in our repeated and animated discus- 
sions of polygamy, that he had more than one wife. And I was 
again struck by the circumstance that here, as heretofore, no wo- 
man indicated by word or look her approval of any argument in 
favor of polygamy. That many women acquiesce in it as an ordi- 
nance of God, and have been drilled into a mechanical assent to the 
logic by which it is upheld, I believe ; but that there is not a wo- 
man in Utah who does not in her heart wish that God had not or- 
dained it I am confident. And quite a number of the young men 
treat it in conversation as a temporary or experimental arrange- 
ment, which is to be sustained or put aside as experience shall 
demonstrate its utility or mischief One old Mormon farmer, with 
whom I discussed the matter privately, admitted that it was impos- 
sible for a poor working-man to have a well-ordered, well-governed 
household, where his children had two or more Uving mothers oc- 
cupying the same ordinary dwelhng. On the whole, I conclude 
that polygamy, as it was a graft on the original stock of Mormon- 
ism, will be outlived by the root; that there will be a new revela- 
tion, ere many years, whereby the Saints will be admonished to 
love and cherish the wives they aheady have, but not to marry any 
more beyond the natural assignment of one wife to each husband. 
" I regret that I have found time and opportunity to visit but one 
of the nineteen common schools of this city. This was thinly at- 
tended by cliildren nearly all quite young, and of the most rudi- 



428 ACROSS THE PLiPINS TO CALIFORNIA. 

mentary attainments. Their phrenological developments were, in 
the average, bad; I say this with freedom, since I have stated that 
those of the adults, as I noted them in the Tabernacle, were good. 
But I am told that idiotic or malformed children are very rare, if 
not unknown here. The male Saints emphasize the fact that a ma- 
jority of the children born here are girls, holding it a proof that 
Providence smiles on their " peculiar institution " ; I, on the con- 
trary, maintain that such is the case in all polygamous countries, 
and proves simply a preponderance of vigor on the part of the 
mothers over that of the fathers wherever this result is noted. I 
presume that a majority of the children of old husbands by young 
wives in any community are girls." 

MR. GREELEY EXCITES CONSTERNATION. 

While the editor of the Tribune was pursuing his journey across 
the continent, a California paper published a burlesque paragraph 
to the effect that he "was on his way to California to take command 
of all the filibusters to be found there ; that Henningsen and Walker 
would join him with forces collected in the Atlantic States ; and 
that the whole horde, under the supreme command of Horace Gree- 
ley, would invade Mexico and usurp the government of that Re- 
public. A copy of this paper fell into the hands of the commander 
at Mazatlan, and he at once issued a proclamation informing the 
people that ' one Horace Grreeley, a most diabolical, bloodthirsty, 
and unmerciful man, worse than the infamous Walker, or even the 
minions of Miramon, — a man whose very name struck dread to 
the hearts of thousands in the United States, so many were his 
crimes and so terrible was his conduct, — is now at the head of the 
most extensive band of filibusters ever collected, and on his way 
to Mexico ! ' He then exhorts the people to prepare themselves 
for instant action, and concludes thus : ' This dangerous man is not 
of the common school of filibusters: they wish for plunder, he for 
blood and murderous deeds.' " 

THIRTEEN HOURS AT SACRAMENTO. 

From the moment of his arrival in CaUfornia to that of his de- 
parture from it Mr. Grreeley was treated as a public guest. As a 
specimen of the manner in which he was received, I copy the fol- 
lowing from the "Sacramento Union" of August 2, 1859. 



THIRTEEN HOURS AT SACRAMENTO. 429 

" On Sunday tlie committee of arrangements held an informal meeting, and 
the committee of reception detailed to meet him at Polsom were put in tele- 
graphic communication with the master of ceremonies at Placerville; the result 
of which was an agreement, on the part of friends of the distinguished stranger 
in the latter city, to deliver him on Monday afternoon, in good order and sound 
condition, by private conveyance, to such of his friends in Sacramento as should 
be in waiting at Folsom. J. P. Robinson, Superintendent of the Sacramento 
Valley Railroad, placed a special train at the service of the committee, with 
the freedom of the road to all they should invite to accompany them. 

" Horace Greeley passed the night, or such portion of it as he was allowed to 
have to himself, at the Gary House, and left Placerville at 11.20 A. M., in 
company with G. W. Swan of that city, in an open-front, two-horse carriage. 
At Mud Springs, about one hundred and fifty of the townspeople and miners 
had assembled to gi-eet him, under a banner stretched across the street. Gree- 
ley did not, however, leave his seat, hut exchanged salutations with the citi- 
zens at the door of the carriage. On the way down the mountains, Mr. Swan's 
lively and ohservant companion noticed with frequent exclamations of wonder 
the enterprise and labor evinced in mining operations, and the miners' appa- 
ratus for conveying water ; spoke of the barrenness of the hillsides, but thought 
it strange that the fertile spots in the valleys should be left unoccupied by till- 
ers of the soil after the miners had denuded the hillsides of gold ; expressed 
great surprise, as all new-comers do, at the fine appearance of our cattle con- 
trasted with the apparent lean and dry pasturage ; thought the fruit in the 
gardens by the roadsides looked astonishingly thrifty ; and after some further 
observations of the same character, and partaking with a good appetite of the 
dinner served for him and his companion at Padurah, the head of the great 
American press sank quietly back in one corner of the carriage, and was prone 
to indulge in such unrefreshing slumber as a warm day over a dusty and tire- 
some road can alone inspire. 

" While the editor of the New York Tribune slept hie friends were wide 
awake in the ' City of the Plains.' At 2.30 P. M. the reception committee, 
and about twenty-five or thirty others whom they had invited, stepped into a 
special car, and, under the convoy of Superintendent Robinson, wei-e soon fly- 
ing on their road to Folsom. The committee reached Folsom in forty minutes 
by the Superintendent's watch, and learned, on arriving, that the ' man with the 
white coat ' had not yet made his appearance. The receptionists strolled about 
the interesting town of Folsom, and, their hospitable ardor communicating to 
sundry of the inhabitants, the cannon was brought out, and soon a thundering 
report, which must have wakened Greeley a mile distant, if he had slept until 
that time, announced that the friends of the great expected were ready to re- 
ceive him with open arms. At a quarter to four, a carriage dra-«ai by a pair 
of roan-colored ponies drove at a pretty smart pace down the main street, and 
straight up to the depot. By this time most of the committee had wandered 
off in the vicinity of the bridge, so that when the proprietor of a little old glazed 
travelling-bag, marked ' H. Greeley, 154 Nassau Street, New York, 1855,' a 
ve-y rusty and well- worn white coat, a still rustier and still more worn and faded 



430 ACROSS THE PLAfXS TO CALIFORNIA. 

blue-cottoii umbrella, together with a roll of blankets, were deposited from the 
carriage, there Avas no one present of the committee to take him by the hand. 
The crowd about the depot, however, closed in so densely that Greeley was 
fain to make for the first open door that presented itself. This, unfortunately, 
happened to be the bar-room attached to the ticket-office ; and here some of the 
committee found him, with his back turned defiantly against the stm-dy rows 
of bottles and decanters, talking informally with some friends who had been 
beforehand; and here the committee seized their guest, and with considerable 
trepidation hurried him across to the hotel over the freight depot, followed by 
a large and increasing crowd. Greeley was escorted to an upper room, where 
J. McClatchy, on behalf of the committee, found opportunity to welcome him 
in set plu-ase, in about the following language : — 

"'Mr. Greeley: This committee, chosen by the citizens of Sacramento 
without regard to party, have waited upon you to bid you welcome to the 
capital of the State. The people of our city have long looked upon you as 
one of the noblest friends of California. They desire to show their appreci- 
ation of your labors in its behalf by giving you a cordial welcome. An-ange- 
ments have been made in our city to receive you and make your stay agree- 
able, and we are ready, at your leisure, to escort you to the friends who are 
waiting your coming. In their name, and in the name of this, their commit- 
tee, I welcome you to our city.' 

" Mr. Gi-eeley replied veiy nearly as follows : — 

" ' I should have been glad, if I could have had my choice, to have avoided 
a formal reception, because it looks like parade, and gives an idea of seeking 
for glory, which is not a part of my plan in coming to California. I shall be 
happy, however, to go with you, and to-night I would like to say something 
about the Pacific Railroad. I am at your service, gentlemen, this evening, 
but I 've got my business affairs to attend to afterward. I have not yet seen 
my letters ; they are waiting for me in your city. I have other places to visit, 
and wish to see all I can, and meet aU the friends I can here and elsewhere.' 

" These remarks were delivered in the peculiar off-hand manner of the great 
Reformer, and in the high key and slender and wavering tones which are char- 
acteristic of his public speaking. When he had finished there was a little 
pause, as though each of the committee was cogitating what next was to be 
done, when Greeley broke in with the bluntness so often ascribed to him, 
' Well, I 'm ready to go when you are.' 0. C. Wheeler, Secretary of the State 
Agricultural Society, now extended an invitation to him to accompany the 
visiting committee on their rounds of visits among the farms and orchards of 
the State, setting out next week ; which invitation Greeley thought he would 
accept, but must take it under consideration. After several persons had been 
introduced, Greeley was escorted back to the depot, followed by ' all Folsom for 
four miles back,' as one of the crowd declared. Near the ticket-office, having 
signified to the committee that he would like to say something to the people, 
Mr. Mooney of the Folsom Express enjoined silence, and Greeley said: — 

"'Fellow-Citizens: I know very well that occasions like this are not 
such as a person should choose for the purpose of making a speech, and I do 



THIRTEEN HOURS AT SACRAMEXTO. 431 

not wish to be regarded as having come among you for speech-making. I 
have come to your far-off land as au Amei-ican comes to visit Americans. I 
don't have time to read books, and I want to learn what I can of the men and 
country I have come to see by practical observation. I want to see the land 
which, durmg the last ten years, has furnished gold enough to check, if it 
could not entirely overcome, the tide of reverse following the commercial ex- 
travagance of the East. One of the oly'ects of my visit has been to see what 
it is practicable to accomplish for the Pacific Eailroad. [Cheers.] I know- 
that great difficulties and obstacles lie in the way, but I also know that every 
addition of wealth and population on this side lessens those difficulties, — every 
one hundred thousand souls you receive into your State increases, not the ne- 
cessity, for that has all along existed, but the imminence of that necessity, so 
to speak. It is a work which must be done in our day, and, if we live the or- 
dinary lives of men, we shall see it accomplished. Every wave of emigration 
to your shores will beat down an obstacle. I entreat you then, fellow-citizens, 
to go on and draw around you the means for this great fulfilment of the noble 
plan. Let us build up an American Republic, not as now, the two sides of a 
great desert, but let us make it a concentrated and harmonious Avhole. Those 
who come to join you here should not pursue the journey as now, wearily, 
sadly, and by slow degi-ees, over these great plains. We must work with all 
our energies for the prosperity of the Pacific Railroad. [Cheers.] I thank 
you for the manner in which you have welcomed me, and I shall return home 
to labor with increased vigor for the road and for the success of the Union.' 

" This short speech was greeted with hearty applause by over one hundred 
and fifty persons, who had assembled to catch a sight of the flaxen locks and 
benevolent face of Horace Greeley. At its close he was conducted into the 
car, and the committee and their guest were soon on their way to this city at 
a rattling pace. 

" The committee of arrangements had prepared seven carriages to be in 
waiting at the depot, on the arrival of the car containing their guest. A tele- 
graphic despatch announced the moment of his departure from Folsom. In 
less time than it had taken to go out, the whistle was heard announcing that 
the train was coming down the levee. As the car approached the city, the 
committee, who had up to this time been acting without much concert or reg- 
ularity, found a rare subject for a concun-ence of speech, at least, in Greeley's 
old white coat and umbrella. Some of the ragged parts of the coat were con- 
verted into little mementos by the more enterprising members of the com- 
mittee. It was about five o'clock when the train reached the depot. Greeley 
was handed into a can-iage, accompanied by the committee distributed through 
the other vehicles, and was driven to the St. George Hotel, where rooms have 
been in keeping for him several days. In the parlor of this hotel a large crowd 
soon began to gather, and H. L. Nichols, President of the Board of Supervisors, 
making his appearance, with other members of the general committee, was 
introduced to their guest by D. ]\Ieeker. Dr. Nichols then made the follow- 
ing address : — 
. '"Mr. Greeley: It is with pleasure, sir, that, on behalf of the citizens of 



432 ACROSS THE PLAINTS TO CALIFORNIA. 

Sacramento, I welcome you to our city. It is probable that but few of us have 
had the honor of your personal acqtiaintance ; but, sir, you are not unknown 
to us. You are known to us as you are known to the world at large; but more 
particularly are you known to us as the true friend of California, and as sucli 
we are ever proud to acknowledge you. We thank you that you have taken 
sufficient interest in our welfare to leave your home in the gi-eat metropolis of 
the East and wend your way across the vast plains and rugged mountains that 
separate us, to visit us in our Western home. We tnist that, while you travel 
through our State, you may not be disappointed with the progre.y? which our 
citizens have made during the short time allowed them. Perhaps you may be 
aware, sir, that the place which you now behold as the city of Sacramento 
was but little more than ten years ago a vast plain, with here and there a few 
cloth tents, which were occupied by the hardy pioneers of the State. We to- 
day in size claim to be the second city on Se- Pacific coast; our inhabitants 
number not less than 15,000 ; we have a property valuation of nearly $ 10,000,000 ; 
we have erected comfortable dwellings for our families, and houses for places 
of business ; reared numerous and ample churches dedicated to the worship of 
Almighty God, and established schools for the education of our children, — in 
fact, we enjoy most of the blessings that our sister cities in the East may lay 
claim to. The hospitalities of this our city I extend to you, and trust that 
during your sojourn here we may be enabled to make your stay pleasant and 
agreeable, so that when you return to your home in the East, and may have 
occasion to refer in memory to the few days spent with us, your feelings may 
be rather of pleasure than of regret. Now, sir, permit me again, in my own 
behalf and in behalf of my fellow-citizens, to bid you a hearty and cordial 
welcome to the City of the Plains, — the capital city of the Golden State.' 

" The address was followed by a round of applause, after which Mr. Greeley 
spoke as follows : — 

" ' Mr. Chairman: It was observed by a great Southern statesman that the 
American Eevolution was not that unnatural or chance struggle, not that 
abnormal thing which we were disposed to think it. The Colony that 
stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock were no longer a Colony, but a State, from 
that hour. It is thus that American genius and American cultivation go be- 
fore, and improvise the arts and a nation's polity. Ten years ago you were 
here familiar with hangings and mob law. I was in London, and I well re- 
member the remark of a British nobleman, that your course was the proper 
working out of the old English law. Men must obey the voice of the commun- 
ity, which is the law, in all cases ; and, if they do not, they must suffer the 
penalty of their offending equally in orderly as well as in disorderly states of 
government. The progi-ess you have made in carrying out your principles of 
government successfully is your highest triumph. Better than your gold or 
your thrift is the fact that here is a population, made up of New-Englanders, 
men of the South, foreign-born, natives of China and almost every part of the 
globe, which gradually, through periods of disorder, you have reduced to the 
best forms of enlightenment, crystallizing them, so to speak, in a perfect and 
durable shape. I do think this is better than gold, for that the savages can dig 



COMMENTS OF THE "SACRAMENTO UNION." 433 

Your schools, your churches, and your obedience to the laws are your greatest 
wealth. And the secret of your success is, that labor here meets its just re- 
ward. California labor rejoices in that assurance. I heard them talk of the 
'want of capital' in California. I do not think capital is necessary. When 
people want labor, and can get it, it is better than capital. [Applause.] Your 
gold product gives assurance that the labor will always find this reward. At 
the same time your gold gives an impulse to civilization, and I think it is safe 
to promise that your htate will increase until it becomes the most populous in 
the Union. [Applause.] I came this long way not to see California alone. I 
wanted to see those interesting spaces where the most primitive forms of life 
can be viewed and contrasted within the borders of our own Kepublic with the 
highest civilization. I wish to study men as I can see them in their cabins, 
and to improve by observation what I have been denied acquiring through 
books and the essays of wise men. I would gladly have come to your city as 
any stranger, satisfied with meeting here and there an old acquaintance, and 
so passed along without formality and public attention. I was aware that I 
knew some among you, but I had no idea of meeting so many old friends. And 
though I would have been glad to avoid a reception, still I cannot refuse to 
meet you in such a way as you think proper. Gentlemen, I thank you for 
your kindness. I have done.' [Applause.] 

" A large number of citizens, at the conclusion of his speech, were introduced 
to Mr. Greeley. All who have known him in the East remark that he has 
never appeared so hearty and well as at present. He looked somewhat jaded 
and dusty from his long ride, but showed no signs of weariness. The crowd 
left him at 5^, and he was not disturbed until he was waited upon to accom- 
pany a portion of the committee to a very handsome dinner. Aboixt twenty 
guests sat down at 6^, and, after dispatching the meal in a business-like way, 
Greeley was permitted to retire, and make ready for the evening's address. 
From the rapidity with which this was done, it is fair to presume that he had 
only to get his hat. A few minutes after eight he was on his way to Benton's 
Church." At the church he delivered a very able and telling speech upon the 
"Pacific Kailroad." 

COMMENTS OF THE " SACRAMENTO UNION." 

" Greeley has come and gone. He was here a little short of thirteen hours, 
during which time he held an informal levee, made a reception speech, partook 
of a special dinner, delivered an address, saw something of the city, opened 
and read his letters, partly arranged the programme of his journey through the 
State, and took a sufficient night's rest to enable him to be up at five the next 
morning, and take his seat in the stage which left the next hour for Grass Val- 
ley, a journey of between sixty and seventy miles over a wearisome mountain 
road. This despatch is characteristic of the man. His prompt, business-like 
method, and his skill in crowding events into a narrow compass, not less than 
his facility of compressing facts and arguments in a short, off-hand speech, 
would commend him to popular admiration in this country, if he had no other 
qualities to support his fame. His brief personal intercourse with our citizens 
28 



434 ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA. 

while here, and his practical suggestions on the Pacific Kailroad, accompanied 
by the earnest and forcible manner of their delivery, have made a favorable 
impression in the community. At Folsom, where he was received by the 
committee sent from this city, and where he volunteered a short address, the 
crowd wore at first sensibly moved to attempt a little good-humored joking at 
the quaint personal appearance of the philosopher and his odd style of oratory, 
but before he had finished his second or third sentence, their attention w^as 
very earnestly on the speaker, and he was inten-upted as well as compli- 
mented at the close, by hearty cheering. This good opinion appears to ex- 
tend to all classes, if we except the ultra Southern politicians; and a general 
wish is felt to hear further from this editor, who writes for, and is believed by 
220,000 ' subscribers,' and who has taken the field in person and in our midst, 
a Peter the Hermit in enthusiasm for the Pacific Eailroad. While this 'abo- 
lition editor,' this ' wretched fanatic,' according to that moderate Lecompton 
organ, the ' San Francisco Herald,' is appealing to our national sympathies on 
tills railroad question, declaring that it is not a question of localities; that, 
* whether it rmis to New York, or to San Antonio, Texas (the favorite route of 
the ' San Francisco Herald'), it would be all the same,' the contrast presented by 
our Democratic Senator and Congressmen who are now addressing the people 
is peculiarly striking. The one, strong in honest purpose, and full of nervous 
energy, pressing the need of this road, and the duty of our citizens toward the 
government ; the others not deigning to give even an explanation of their views 
and the policy of thousands of our countrj'^men in the East. Neither the 
views nor the personal influence of our Lecompton delegates to the next Con- 
gress will be of any practical benefit to the road, admitting (which we do not) 
that they are its sincere and disinterested friends. 

" The notable circumstance that the editor of the Tribune is endeavoring to 
arouse the country in behalf of a Pacific Eailroad immediately on his arrival 
at the end of his long journey, almost before he has brushed the dust of travel 
from his garments, will cany gi-eater weight with it in the East than all Gwin 
has ever said, or can say, in Congress. It will be personal testimony in favor 
of the enterprise of the strongest kind." 

VISIT TO THE YO SEMITE VALLEY. 

" The night was clear and bright, as all summer nights in this 
region are ; the atmosphere cool, but not really cold ; the moon had 
risen before seven o'clock, and was shedding so much light as to 
bother us in our forest path, where the shadow of a standing pine 
looked exceedingly like the substance of a fallen one, and many 
semblances were unreal and misleading. The safest course was to 
give your horse a full rein, and trust to his sagacity or self-love for 
keeping the trail. As we descended by zigzags the north face of 
the all but perpendicular mountain, our moonlight soon left us, or 
was present only by reflection from the opposite chff. Soon the 



VISIT TO THE YO SEMITE VALLEY. 435 

trail became at once so steep, so rough, and so tortuous, that we 
all dismounted; but my attempt at walking proved a miserable 
failure. I had been riding with a bad Mexican stirrup, which 
barely admitted the toes of my left foot, and continual pressure on 
these had sprained and swelled them so that walking was positive 
torture. I persisted in the attempt till my companions insisted on 
my remounting, and thus floundering slowly to the bottom. By 
steady effort we descended the three miles (4,000 feet perpendicu- 
lar) in two hours, and stood at midnight by the rushing, roaring 
waters of the Mercede. 

"That first full, deliberate gaze up the opposite height! can I 
ever forget it? The valley is here scarely half a mile wide, while 
its northern wall of mainly naked, perpendicular granite is at least 
4,000 feet high, probably more. But the modicum of moonlight 
that fell into this awful gorge gave to that precipice a vagueness 
of outhne, an indefinite vastness, a ghostly and weird spirituahty. 
Had the mountain spoken to me in audible voice, or begun to lean 
over with the purpose of burying me beneath its crushing mass, I 
should hardly have been surprised. Its whiteness, thrown into 
bold relief by the patches of trees or shrubs which fringed or 
flecked it wherever a few handfuls of its moss, slowly decomposed 
to earth, could contrive to hold on, continually suggested the pres- 
ence of snow, which suggestion, with difficulty refuted, was at 
once renewed. And looking up the valley, we saw just such 
mountain precipices, barely separated by intervening water-courses 
(mainly dry at this season) of inconsiderable depth, and only re- 
ceding sufficiently to make room for a very narrow meadow enclos- 
ing the river, to the farthest limit of vision. 

" We discussed the propriety of camping directly at the foot of 
the pass, but decided against it, because of the inadequacy of the 
grass at this point for our tired, hungry beasts, and resolved to push 
on to the nearest of the two houses in the valley, which was said 
to be four miles distant. To my dying day I shall remember that 
weary, interminable ride up the valley. We had been on foot since 
daylight ; it was now past midnight ; all were nearly used up, and 
I in torture from over eleven hours' steady riding on the hardest 
trotting horse in America. Yet we pressed on and on, through 
clumps of trees, and bits of forest, and patches of meadow, and over 
hillocks of mountain debris^ mainly granite boulders of every sJze, 



4-36 ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA. 

often nearly as round as cannon-balls, forming all but perpendicular 
banks to the capricious torrent that brought them hither, — those 
stupendous precipices on either side glaring down upon us all the 
while. How many times our heavy eyes — I mean those of my 
San Francisco friend and my own — were lighted up by visions of 
that intensely desired cabin, visions which seemed distinct and un- 
mistakable, but which, alas ! a nearer view proved to be made up 
of moonlight and shadow, rock and tree, into w^hich they faded 
one after another. It seemed at length that we should never reach 
the cabin, and my wavering mind recalled elfish German stories of 
the wild huntsman, and of men who, having accepted invitations to 
a midnight chase, found on their return that said chase had been 
prolonged till all their relatives and friends were dead, and no one 
could be induced to recognize or recollect them. Grladly could I 
have thrown myself recklessly from the saddle and lain where I 
fell, till morning, but this would never answer, and we kept stead- 
ily on : 

* Time and the hour wear out the longest day.' 

" At length the real cabin — one made of posts and beams and 
whipsawed boards, instead of rock and shadow and moonshine — 
was reached, and we all eagerly dismounted, turning out our weary 
steeds into abundant grass, and stirring up the astonished landlord, 
who had never before received guests at that unseemly hour. (It 
was after 1 A. M.) He made us welcome, however, to his best 
accommodations, which would have found us lenient critics even 
had they been worse, and I crept into my rude but clean bed so 
soon as possible, while the rest awaited the preparation of some re- 
freshment for the inner man. There was never a dainty that could 
have tempted me to eat at that hour. I am told that none ever 
before travelled from Bear Yalley to the Yo Semite in one day, — I 
am confident no greenhorns ever did. The distance can hardly 
exceed thirty miles by an air line ; but only a bird could traverse 
that line ; while, by w^ay of Mariposa and the South Fork, it must 
be fully sixty miles, with a rise and fall of not less than 20,000 feet. 

" The Fall of the Yo Semite, so called, is a humbug. It is not the 
Mercede River that makes this fall, but a mere tributary trout-brook, 
which pitches in from the north by a barely once broken descent 
of 2,600 feet, w^hile the Mercede enters the valley at its eastern ex- 
tremity, over falls of 600 and 250 feet. But a river thrice as large 



VISIT TO THE YO SEMITE VALLEY. 437 

as the Mercede at this season would be utterly dwarfed by all the 
other accessories of this prodigious chasm. Only a Mississippi or a 
Niagara could be adequate to their exactions. I readily concede 
that a hundred times the present amount of water may roll down 
the Yo Semite fall in the months of May and June, when the snows 
are melting from the central ranges of the Sierra Nevada, which 
bound this abyss on the east; but this would not add a fraction to 
the wonder of this vivid exemplification of the Divine power and 
majesty. At present, the little stream that leaps down the Yo 
Semite and is all but shattered to mist by the amazing descent, looks 
more like a tape-line let down from the cloud-capped height to 
measure the depth of the abyss. The Yo Semite Valley (or gorge) 
is the most unique and majestic of Nature's marvels, but the Yo 
Semite Fall is of little account. Were it absent, the valley would 
not be perceptibly less worthy of a fatiguing visit. 

" We traversed the valley from end to end next day, but an ac- 
cumulation of details on such a subject only serve to confuse and 
blunt the observer's powers of perception and appreciation. Per- 
haps the visitor who should be content with a long look into the 
abyss from the most convenient height, without braving the toil of 
a descent, would be wiser than all of us ; and yet that first glance 
upward from the foot will long haunt me as more impressive than 
any look downward from the summit could be. 

" I shall not multiply details nor waste paper in noting all the 
foolish names which foolish people have given to difierent peaks or 
turrets. Just think of two giant stone towers or pillars, which rise 
a thousand feet above the towering cliff which forms their base, 
being styled ' The Two Sisters ! ' Could anything be more mala- 
droit and lackadaisical ? ' The Dome ' is a high, round, naked peak, 
which rises between the Mercede and its little tributary from the 
inmost recesses of the Sierra Nevada already instanced, and which 
towers to an altitude of over five thousand feet above the waters 
at its base. Picture to yourself a perpendicular wall of bare granite 
nearly or quite one mile high ! Yet there are some dozen or score 
of peaks in all, ranging from three thousand to five thousand feet 
above the valley, and a biscuit tossed from any of them would strike 
very near its base, and its fragments go bounding and falling still 
farther. I certainly miss here the glaciers of Chamouni; but I 
know no single wonder of Nature on earth which can claim a su- 



438 ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA. 

periority over the Yo Semite. Just dream yourself for one hour 
in a chasm nearly ten miles long, with egress for birds and water 
out at either extremity, and none elsewhere save at three points, 
up the face of precipices from three thousand to four thousand feet 
high, the chasm scarcely more than a mile wide at any point and 
tapering to a mere gorge or canon at either end, with walls of 
mainly naked and perpendicular white granite from three thousand 
to five thousand feet high, so that looking up to the sky from it is 
like looking out of an unfathomable profound, and you will have 
some conception of the Yo Semite. 

" We dined at two o'clock, and then rode leisurely down the val- 
ley, gazing by daylight at the wonders we had previously passed in 
the night. The spectacle was immense, but I still think the moon- 
light view the more impressive." 

MR. GREELEY AT SAN FRANCISCO. 

At the chief city of California the editor of the Tribune was 
again the guest of the people. The " Bulletin " thus described his 
appearance at a public meeting. 

" The Grand Pacific Railroad mass meeting, whicli took place on the evening 
of 17th August, in front of the Oriental, on the occasion of the public appear- 
ance in San Francisco of the Hon. Horace Greeley, "was an imposing demon- 
stration, and in all respects a decided success. By 7^ o'clock the people had 
collected in vast numbers, and the plaza and street in front of the hotel were 
crowded. There must have been, at a fair computation, five thousand people 
present, and all manifested much interest in the great object for which the 
meeting was called, and in the man who was to address them. 

" The Oriental Hotel was brilliantly illuminated for the occasion. Between 
the pillars of the veranda wei'e hung many Japanese lanterns, and the balus- 
trades were filled with lamps. As it was known many ladies would be pres- 
ent, seats were placed on the balcony for them ; and long before the speaking 
commenced, these and the windows and rooms opening upon them were filled. 
Among the ladies of the balcony, A. J. King, the stock-broker, happened to 
be espied by the crowd, and loud cries of ' Put him out,' ' How 's your toe- 
* nails,' and other such expressions were heard, and for some time the audience 
was very boisterous at the notorious broker's expense. This, however, was 
before the meeting organized. 

" At 8 o'clock L-a P. Eankin stepped forward upon the platform and nomi- 
nated a president and officers of the meeting. 

" As soon as the meetmg was organized, Mr. Greeley made his appearance 
upon the stand which had been erected in fi-ont of the hotel, and was raised 
about six feet above the street. His appearance was greeted with prolonged 



MR. GREELEY AT 8AN FRANCISCO. 439 

cheers. Colonel Crockett stepped forward for the piirpose of introducing the 
speaker ; but the crowd was so anxious to see and hear ^Ir. Greeley, that 
for a few minutes he could not be heard. The more distant portions of the 
assembly cried, 'We camiot see Mr. Greeley,' ' Take the balcony,' 'We want 
to see him.' Colonel Crockett replied that Mr. Greeley protested that he 
could not be heard from the balcony. The crowd seemed determined that 
they would see the speaker, and hun-ahed and vociferated until the president 
stated that Mr. Greeley would compromise by standing on the table. At this 
proposition there was great applause, and order being restored, after a few 
words of introduction by the president of the meeting, Mr. Greeley mounted 
the table and stood up before the people, at which there were again hearty 
and repeated cheers. Several firemen's torches were so disposed on the stand 
as to throw their light upon him. 

" The personal appearance of Mr. Greeley is familiar to many of our read- 
ers. He is above the medium height, rather thin, and has a slight stoop. His 
head is bald, with the exception of light flaxen locks at the sides and back. 
Though nearly fifty years of age, there are no wrinkles in his face ; on the 
contrary, his features, except for his baldness, would indicate quite a young 
man. Thei-e is a peculiar brightness in his eyes, and the general expression 
of his face is mildness and benignity. His dress, last evening, after drawing 
off his drab overcoat (from which the mountaineers cut ofi'all the buttons), 
was plain black with a light neckcloth. The famous white hat had been 
exchanged for one of dun-colored wool. His late journey across the plains, 
although it fatigued him much, has made him weigh more than ordinarily, 
ajid has given him a fresh and hale appearance." 

The speech was eminently successful. " With his last word," 
said the "Bulletin," Mr. Glreeley "turned to descend the table upon 
which he had been standing, while the crowd cheered and hurrahed 
to the extent of their lungs. He had spoken for very nearly an 
hour, in a remarkably clear, correct, and agreeable tone of voice. 
In many parts of his discourse, and particularly toward the close, 
he was eloquent, and made the most happy impression upon the 
audience. Indeed, he exceeded the anticipations of those who 
were well acquainted with his abilities as a public speaker." 

He delivered also a remarkably excellent address before the 
" Mechanics' Institute " of San Francisco. To the pupils of the 
High School, and to those of one of the grammar schools he ad- 
dressed a few wise and impressive words. 

It would be difficult to overestimate the happy influence of Mr. 
Grreeley's visit upon the forming character of California. He gave 
an impulse to all good tendencies, and strengthened the position of 
every man who was in harmony with them. "Eemember, my 



440 ACROSS THE PLAINS TO CALIFORNIA. 

friends," said lie at the close of an agricultural address, "remember 
that the end of all true agriculture, as well as of effort in other di- 
rections, is the growth and perfection of the human race. Yain is 
all other progress unless the human race progresses in knowledge, 
in industry, in temperance, and in virtue; and when this end is at- 
tained, no other need be despaired of. Let us remember this, and 
in all our fairs, in our festivals, in our gatherings, ask : ' Have the 
people around us grown in knowledge ? Are our schools better, 
our people better educated, more intelhgent, more virtuous than 
they were thirty or ten years ago ? ' If they are, we may rejoice 
and feel confident that agriculture and all other useful arts will go 
forward hand in hand." 

To the Mechanics' Institute of San Francisco he said : — 
" The new idea of our time is founded upon a better understand- 
ing of the law of G-od and humanity. It recognizes all useful labor 
as essentially laudable and honorable, — the greater honor where 
there is the greater proficiency. The digger who makes the thou- 
sandth part of a canal is not of honor equal to the scientific engi- 
neer who fully accomplishes the work of its construction. More 
honor with greater inteUigence, but honor to each in his degree, 
but the larger honor is due to him who accomplishes the greater 
result. Simply manual labor can never achieve the highest re- 
ward, nor command the greatest regard. Hand and head must 
work together. To accomplish great results the laborer must be in- 
telligent and educated. In this country, the price of labor is com- 
paratively high, and yet it is a question whether it is not, on the 
whole, cheaper in the end than elsewhere. Nicholas Biddle, and 
other distinguished thinkers upon the subject, asserted that Ameri- 
can labor at a higher price was cheaper than the labor of Spain or 
most other countries at almost nominal rates. In building the bed 
of a railroad, for instance, it is found cheaper with American labor, 
or labor under their guidance and direction, than with any other. 
This is proved by the fact that railroads can be built in America at 
one sixth part of the cost of constructing them in Italy, and I be- 
Heve, in Ireland also. Labor, as it becomes better educated, will 
also become more effective, and when it receives its double reward, 
it will be more profitable." 

Nor did he omit, in view of the coming struggle in poHtics, to 
expound the principles of the Repubhcan party, and lay bare the 



MR. GREELEY AT SAN FRANCISCO. 441 

designs of the rulers of the South. His political addresses added to 
the strength of the Repubhcans in Cahfornia, and made their tri- 
nmph easier. 

Returning homeward by way of Panama, Mr. Greeley reached 
New York on the 28th of September, after an absence of nearly 
five months. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

HOEACE GKEELEY AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION 
OF 1860. 

Mr. Greeley's reasons for opposing Mr. Seward — Mr. Raymond's accusation — The private 
letter to Mr. Seward— The comments of Thurlow Weed— The three-cent stamp corre- 
spondence—Mr. Greeley a candidate for the Senate — He declines a seat in Mr. Lincoln's 
Tabernacle. 

On the 16th of May, 1860, a National Convention of the Repub- 
lican party met at Chicago for the purpose of nominating candidates 
for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency. Mr. G-reeley attended the 
Convention as a delegate from Oregon. The general expectation 
was that Mr, Seward would receive the nomination for the first 
ofl&ce. He was set aside, however, and Abraham Lincoln became 
the candidate of the party. The person chiefly instrumental in 
frustrating the hopes of Mr. Seward's friends was the editor of the 
Tribune. At least we may say, with the utmost confidence, that, 
had Mr. Greeley, in his newspaper and at Chicago, given a hearty 
support to Mr. Seward, that gentleman would have been nomi- 
nated. Mr. Greeley's reasons for his course on this memorable 
occasion were stated by himself as follows : — 

"My mind had been long before dehberately made up that the 
nomination of Governor Seward for President was unadvisable 
and unsafe ; yet I had resolved to avoid this Convention for obvi- 
ous reasons. But when, some four or five weeks since, I received 
letters from Oregon, apprising me that, of the six delegates ap- 
pointed and fully expecting to attend from that State, but two 
would be able to do so, on account of the very brief notice they 
had of the change of time of holding the Convention, and that Mr. 
Leander Holmes, one of those who had been appointed, and clothed 
with full power of substitution, had appointed and requested me 
to act in his stead, I did not feel at Hberty to refuse the duty thus 
imposed on me. Of the four letters that simultaneously reached 
me, — one from Mr. Holmes, another from Mr. Corbitt, chairman 
of the Republican State Committee, a third from the editor of a lead- 
ing Repubhcan journal, and the fourth from an eminent ex -editor, 

442 



GREELEY AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION OF 1860. 443 

— at least three indicated Judge Bates as the decided choice of 
Oregon for President, and the man who would be most likely to 
carry it, — a very natural preference, since a large proportion of 
the people of Oregon emigrated from Missouri. One of them sug- 
gested Mr, Lincoln as also a favorite, many Illinoisans being now 
settled in Oregon. 

"I went to Chicago to do my best to nominate Judge Bates, 
unless facts there developed should clearly render another choice 
advisable. I deemed Judge Bates the very man to satisfy and 
attract the great body of conservative and quiet voters who have 
hitherto stood aloof from the Republican organization, not because 
they dissent from our principles, but because they have been taught 
to distrust and hate us on other grounds. I deemed him the man 
whose election would, while securing the devotion of the Territo- 
ries to free labor, conciliate and calm the Slave States in view of a 
Republican ascendency. But, more than all, I felt that the nomi- 
nation of Judge Bates would have given a basis and an impetus to 
the emancipation cause in Missouri which would nevermore have 
been arrested. And now, when all the world is raining bouquets 
on the successful nominee, so that, if he were not a very tall man, 
he might stand a chance to be smothered under them ; when thou- 
sands are rushing to bore him out of house and home, and snowing 
him white with letters, and trying to plaster him all over with their 
advertising placards, I, who knew and esteemed him ten years ago, 
reiterate that I think Judge Bates, to whom I never spoke nor wrote, 
would have been the wiser choice. I say this, knowing well that 
his nomination would have fallen like a wet blanket on nearly the 
whole party, that thousands would have sworn never to support it, 
and that counter-nominations would have been got up, or seriously 
threatened. But I kept my eye steadily on the fact that the first 
and only summer election that is to be held in a State that we 
could in any event hope to carry is that of Missouri, where the Re- 
publicans all earnestly desired the selection of their loved and hon- 
ored fellow-citizen, and where thousands not Republicans were 
ready and eager to co-operate with them in case of his nomination. 
I do not know that they could have carried their State in August; 
but they confidently thought they could, and would at all events 
have made a desperate efi'ort. And that efibrt, even though de- 
feated, would have shown a result most inspiriting to Repubhcans 



444 GREELEY AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION OF 1860. 

everywhere, and especially propitious to the free-labor cause in 
Missouri. Thtre is no truer, more faithful, more deserving Repub- 
lican than Abraham Lincoln ; probably no nomination could have 
been made more conducive to a certain triumph; and yet I feel 
that the selection of Edward Bates would have been more far- 
sighted, more courageous, more magnanimous." 

Mr. G-reeley proceeded to state that the true cause of Mr. Sew- 
ard's defeat was, not his own opposition to him, but the conviction, 
on the part of the delegates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and 
Indiana, that the nomination of Mr. Seward would jeopardize the 
election in those States. 

This article in the Tribune elicited a reply from Mr. Henry J. 
Eaymond. On his return from the Chicago Convention Mr. Ray- 
mond visited his friend Seward at Auburn, where he wrote a let- 
ter to the New York Times, commenting upon Mr. G-reeley's con- 
duct with severity, and attributing it to personal motives. The 
following is the material part of his letter : — 

" I observe that to-day's Tribune contains a long personal explanation from 
Mr. Greeley of the part which he took in the action of the Chicago Convention. 
It is never easy for a public man to be the historian of his own exploits. If 
he be a vain man, he will exaggerate his personal influence ; if he be an over- 
modest one, he will underrate it. It is scarcely necessary to say that Mr. 
Greeley has fallen into the latter mistake. With the generosity which be- 
longs to his nature, and which a feeling not unlike remorse may have stimu- 
lated into unwonted activity, he awards to others the credit which belongs 
transcendently to himself. The main work of the Chicago Convention was 
the defeat of Governor Seward ; that was the only specific and distinct object 
towards which its conscious efforts were directed. The nomination which it 
finally made was purely an accident, decided far more by the shouts and ap- 
plause of the vast concourse which dominated the Convention, than by any 
direct labors of any of the delegates. The great point aimed at was Mr. Sew- 
ard's defeat ; and in that endeavor Mr. Greeley labored harder, and did ten- 
fold more, than the whole family of Blairs, together with all the gubernato- 
rial candidates, to whom he modestly hands over the honors of the effective 
campaign. He had special qualifications, as well as a special love for the task, 
to which none of the others could lay any claim. For twenty years hrhad 
been sustaining the political principles and vindicating the political conduct 
of Mr. Seward, through the columns of the most influential political news- 
paper in the country. He had infused into the popular mind, especially 
throughout the Western States, the most profound and thorough devotion to the 
antislavery sentiments which had given character to Mr. Seward's public ca- 
reer ; he had vindicated his opinions upon naturalization and upon the organ- 
ization of the Know-No thing party from the assaults made upon them ; he 



MR. RAYMOND'S ACCUSATlOtf, 445 

had urged his re-election to the Senate in the face of all the sentiments whicl 
had made him obnoxious to a portion of his constituents ; he had gone far be 
yond him in expressions of hostility to slayery, in palliation of armed attempts 
for its overthrow, and in assaults upon that clause of the Constitution which 
requires the surrender of fugitive slaves ; and he was known to have been for 
more than twenty years his personal friend and political supporter. These 
things gave him a hold upon the Republican sentiment of the country, and a 
weight of authority in everything relating to Governor Seward to which 
neither ' old Blair of the Globe,' as Mr. Greeley styles him, nor both his sons, 
could for a moment lay claim. His voice was potential precisely where Gov- 
ernor Seward was strongest, — because it was supposed to be that of a friend, 
strong in his personal attachment and devotion, and driven into opposition on 
this occasion solely by the despairing conviction that the welfare of the coun- 
try and the triumph of the Republican cause demanded the sacrifice. For 
more than six months, through the columns of the Tribune, Mr. Greeley had 
been preparing the way for this consummation. Doubts of Mr. Seward's pop- 
ular strength, — insinuated rather than openly uttered, — exaggerations of 
local prejudice and animosity against him ; hints that parties and men hostile 
to him and to the Republican organization must be conciliated, and their sup- 
port secured : and a new-bom zeal for nationalizing the party by consulting 
the slaveholding States in regard to the nomination, — had filled the public mind 
with a distrust which had already done much to demoralize the Republican 
party, and prepare the minds of its delegates in convention for the personal rep- 
resentations and appeals by which these agencies were followed up. Mr. Gree- 
ley was in Chicago several days before the meeting of the Convention, and he 
devoted every hour of the interval to the most steady and relentless prosecu- 
tion of the main business which took him thither, — the defeat of Governor 
Seward. He labored personally with the delegates as they arrived, — com- 
mending himself always to their confidence by professions of regard and the 
most zealous friendship for Governor Seward, but presenting defeat, even in 
New York, as the inevitable result of his nomination. 

" Mr. Greeley was largely indebted to the forbearance of those upon whom 
he was waging this warfare for the means of making it effectual. While it 
was known to some of them that, nearly six years ago — in November, 1854 
— he had privately, but distinctly, repudiated all further political friendship 
for and alliance with Governor Seward, and menaced him with his hostility 
whenever it could be made most effective, for the avowed reason that Gover- 
nor Seward had never aided or advised his elevation to office ; that he had 
never recognized his claim to such official promotion, but had tolerated the 
elevation of men known to be obnoxious to him, and who had rendered far 
less sei-vice to the party than he had done, — no use was made of this knowl- 
edge in quarters where it would have disarmed the deadly effect of his pretended 
friendship for the man upon whom he was thus deliberately wreaking the long- 
hoarded revenge of a disappointed office-seeker. He was still allowed to repre- 
sent to the delegations from Vermont, New Hampshire, Ohio, Indiana, and 
other States known to be in favor of Governor Seward's nomination, that. 



446 GREELEY AT THE CHICA^iO CONVENTION OF 1800. 

while h© desired it upon the strongest grounds of personal and political friend- 
ship, he believed it would be fatal to the success of the cause. Being (hut 
$timulated by a hatred he had secretly cherished for years, — protected by the 
forbearance of those whom he assailed, and strong in the confidence of those 
upon whom he sought to operate, — it is not strange that Mr. Greeley's eflforts 
should have been crowned with success. But it is perfectly safe to say that 
no other man — certainly no one occupying a position less favorable for such 
an assault — could possibly have accomplished that result. 

" We deem it only just to Mr. Greeley thus early to award him the full 
credit for the main result of the Chicago Convention, because his own modesty 
will prevent his claiming it, — at all events until the new Republican adminis ■ 
tration shall be in position to distribute its rewards. It is not right that merit 
so conspicuous should remain so long in the shade. Even the most transcen- 
dent services are in danger of being forgotten, in the tumult and confusion of 
a contested election ; and we cheerfully tender, for Mr. Greeley's use, this 
record of his deserts, when he may claim at the hands of his new associates 
that pa\Tnent for lack of which he has deserted and betrayed his old ones. 

" I have said above, that the final selection of Lincoln as the candidate was 
a matter of accident. I mean by this that, down to the time of taking the first 
ballot, there had been no agreement among the opponents of Seward as to the 
candidate upon whom they should unite. The first distinct impression, in 
Lincoln's favor was made by the tremendous applause which arose from the 
ten thousand persons congregated in the Wigwam, upon the presentation of 
his name as a candidate, and by the echo it received from the still larger 
gathering in the street outside. The arrangements for the Convention were in 
the hands of Mr. Lincoln's friends, and they had been made with special ref- 
erence to securing the largest possible concourse of his immediate neighbors 
and political supporters. It was easy to see that the thundering shouts which 
greeted every vote given for him impressed what Mr. G;^eley calls the ' rag- 
ged columns forming the opposing host,' with the conviction that he was the 
only man with whom Mr. Seward could be defeated. Vermont, whose dele- 
gates would have been peremptorily instructed to vote for Seward if there had 
been the slightest apprehension on the part of their constituents that they coul(d 
do otherwise, was the first to catch the contagious impulse ; and throughout 
the second ballot the efforts of other States to resist the current which del- 
uged the Convention from without were but partially successful. On the 
third ballot the outsiders had it all their own way. Upon the first call Lin- 
coln lacked only two and a half votes of a nomination. Ohio was the first to 
clutch at the honor of deciding the choice ; and thenceforward the only ap- 
prehension on the part of delegates seemed to be that they would not be regis- 
tered on the winning side. The final concentration upon Lincoln was then 
mainly, in my judgment, a matter of impulse." 

The reader will have observed, from the sentences of this letter 
printed in Italics, that Mr. Raymond refers to a private letter of 
the editor of the Tribune, v^ritten in November, 1854, to Mr 



HORACE GREELEY TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 447 

Seward, in which Mr, Greeley was said to have renounced poHtical 
friendship with the Eepubhcan chief, and to have menaced him 
with hostiUty. Mr. G-reeley instantly demanded the letter for 
publication in every edition of the Tribune. After some delay the 
letter was produced and immediately published. The following is 
a copy of it : — 

HOKACE GREELEY TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 

" New York, Saturday eve., Nov. 11, 1854. 

" Governor Seward : — The election is over, and its results suffi- 
ciently ascertained. It seems to me a fitting time to announce to 
you the dissolution of the pohtical firm of Seward, Weed, and Gree- 
ley, by the withdrawal of the junior partner, — said withdrawal to 
take effect on the morning after the first Tuesday in February next.* 
And, as it may seem a great presumption in me to assume that any 
such firm exists, especially since the pubhc was advised, rather more 
than a year ago, by an editorial rescript in the Evening Journal, for- 
mally reading me out of the Whig party, that I was esteemed no 
longer either useful or ornamental in the concern, you will, I am 
sure, indulge me in some reminiscences which seem to befit the 
occasion. 

"I was a poor young printer and editor of a literary journal, — a 
very active and bitter Whig in a small way, but not seeking to be 
known out of my own ward committee, — when, after the great 
pohtical revulsion of 1837, I was one day called to the City Hotel, 
where two strangers introduced themselves as Thurlow Weed and 
Lewis Benedict of Albany. They told me that a cheap campaign 
paper of a peculiar stamp at Albany had been resolved on, and that 
I had been selected to edit it. The announcement might well be 
deemed flattering by one who had never even sought the notice of 
the great, and who was not known as a partisan writer, and I 
eagerly embraced their proposals. They asked me to fix my salary 
for the year; I named $ 1,000, which they agreed to; and I did the 
work required to the best of my ability. It was work that made 
no figure and created no sensation; but I loved it, and I did it well. 

* The day on which the re-election of Mr. Seward to the Senate was ex- 
pected to occur, and on which it did occur, with the Tribune's assent and 
support. — J. P. 



448 GREELEY AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION OF 1860. 

When it was done, you were Governor, dispensing offices worth 
$3,000 to $20,000 per year to your friends and compatriots, and I 
returned to my garret and my crust, and my desperate battle with 
pecuniary obligations heaped upon me by bad partners in business 
and the disastrous events of 1837. I believe it did not then occur 
to me that some one of these abundant places might have been of- 
fered to me without injustice ; I now think it should have occurred 
to you. If it did occur to me, I was not the man to ask you for it ; 
I think that should not have been necessary. I only remember that 
no friend at Albany inquired as to my pecuniary circumstances , 
that your friend (but not mine) Robert 0. Wetmore was one of the 
chief dispensers of your patronage here; and that such devoted 
compatriots as A. H. Wells and John Hooks were lifted by you out 
of pauperism into independence, as I am glad I was not; and yet 
an inquiry from you as to my needs and means at that time would 
have been timely, and held ever in grateful remembrance. 

"In the Harrison campaign of 1840 I was again designated to 
edit a campaign paper. I published it as well, and ought to have 
made something by it, in spite of its extremely low price ; my ex- 
treme poverty was the main reason why I did not. It compelled 
me to hire press-work, maihng, (fee, done by the job, and high 
charges for extra work nearly ate me up. At the close, I was still 
without property and in debt, but this paper had rather improved 
my position. 

"Now came the great scramble of the swell mob of coon min- 
strels and cider-suckers at Washington, — I not being counted in. 
Several regiments of them went on from this city ; but no one of 
the whole crowd, though I say it who should not, had done so 
much toward General Harrison's nomination and election as yours 
respectfully. I asked nothing, expected nothing; but you. Gov- 
ernor Seward, ought to have asked that I be postmaster of New 
York. Your asking would have been in vain ; but it would have 
been an act of grace neither wasted nor undeserved. 

" I soon after started the Tribune, because I was urged to do so 
by certain of your friends, and because such a paper was needed 
here. I was promised certain pecuniary aid in so doing; it might 
have been given me without cost or risk to any one. All I ever 
had was a loan by piecemeal of $ 1,000 from James Coggeshall, — 
God bless his honored memory ! I did not ask for this, and I think 



HORACE GREELEY TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 449 

it is the one sole case in which I ever received a pecuniary favor 
from a political associate. I am very thankful that he did not die 
till it was fully repaid. 

"And let me here honor one grateful recollection. When the 
Whig party under your rule had offices to give my name was 
never thought of; but when, in 1842-43, we were hopelessly out 
of power, I was honored with the party nomination for State 
Printer. When we came again to have a State Printer to elect as 
well as nominate, the place went to Weed, as it ought. Yet it is 
worth something to know that there was once a time when it was 
not deemed too great a sacrifice to recognize me as belonging to 
your household. If a new office had not since been created on 
purpose to give its valuable patronage to H. J. Eaymond and en- 
able St. John to show forth his ' Times ' as the organ of the Whig 
State Administration, I should have been still more grateful. 

" In 1848 your star again rose, and my warmest hopes were real- 
ized in your election to the Senate. I was no longer needy, and 
had no more claim than desire to be recognized by General Taylor. 
I think I had some claim to forbearance from you. What I re- 
ceived thereupon was a most humiliating lecture in the shape of a 
decision in the Hbel case of Redfield and Pringle, and an obligation 
to publish it in my own and the other journal of our supposed firm. 
I thought and still think this lecture needlessly cruel and mortifying. 
The plaintiffs, after using my columns to the extent of their needs 
or desires, stopped writing, and called on me for the name of their 
assailant. I proffered it to them, — a thoroughly responsible name. 
They refused to accept it, unless it should prove to be one of the 
four or five first men in Batavia ! — when they had known from 
the first who it was, and that it was neither of them. They would 
not accept that which they had demanded ; they sued me instead 
for money, and money you were at liberty to give them to your 
heart's content. I do not think you were at liberty to humiliate me 
in the eyes of my own and your * public as you did. I think you 
exalted your own judicial sternness and fearlessness unduly at my 
expense. I think you had a better occasion for the display of these 
qualities, when Webb threw himself untimely upon you for a par- 

* " If I am not mistaken, this judgment is the only speech, letter, or docu- 
ment addressed to the public in which you ever recognized my existence. 1 
hope I may not go down to posterity as embalmed therein." 
29 



450 GREELEY AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION OF 1860. 

don which he had done all a man could do to demerit. (His paper 
is paying you for it now.) 

" I have publicly set forth my view of your and our duty with 
respect to fusion, Nebraska, and party designations. I will not 
repeat any of that. I have referred also to Weed's reading me out 
of the Whig party, — my crime being, in this as in some other 
things, that of doing to-day what more pohtic persons will not be 
ready to do till to-morrow. 

" Let me speak of th« late canvass. I was once sent to Congress 
for ninety days, merely to enable Jim Brooks to secure a seat 
therein for four years. I think I never hinted to any human being 
that I would have liked to be put forward for any place. But 
James W. White (you hardly know how good and true a man he 
is) started my name for Congress, and Brooks's packed delegation 
thought I could help him through; so I was put on behind him. 
But this last spring, after the Nebraska question had created a new 
state of things at the North, one or two personal friends, of no po- 
htical consideration, suggested my name as a candidate for G-over- 
nor, and I did not discourage them. Soon, the persons who were 
afterward mainly instrumental in nominating Clark came about me, 
and asked if I could secure the Know-Nothing vote. I told them 
I neither could nor would touch it; on the contrary, I loathed 
and repelled it. Thereupon they turned upon Clark. 

" I said nothing, did nothing. A hundred people asked me who 
should be run for G-overnor. I sometimes indicated Patterson ; I 
never hinted at my own name. But by and by Weed came down 
and called me to him, to tell me why he could not support me for 
Governor. (I had never asked nor counted on his support.) 

" I am sure Weed did not mean to humiliate me ; but he did it. 
The upshot of his discourse (very cautiously stated) was this : If I 
were a candidate for Grovernor, I should beat, not myself only, but 
you. Perhaps that was true. But as I had in no manner solicited 
his or your support, I thought this might have been said to my 
friends rather than to me. I suspect it is true that I could not 
have been elected Governor as a Whig. But had he and you been 
favorable, there would have been a party in the State ere this which 
could and would have elected me to any post, without injuring 
itself or endangering your re-election. 

" It was in vain that I urged that I had in no manner asked a 



HORACE GREELEY TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD. 451 

nomination. At length I was nettled by his language — Well in- 
tended, but very cutting as addressed by him to me — to say, in 
substance, 'Well, then, make Patterson Governor, and try my 
name for Lieutenant. To lose this place is a matter of no impor- 
tance; and we can see whether I am really so odious.' 

" I should have hated to serve as Lieutenant-Governor, but I 
should have gloried in running for the post. I want to have my 
enemies all upon me at once ; I am tired of fighting them piece- 
meal. And, though I should have been beaten in the canvass, I 
know that my running would have helped the ticket, and helped 
my paper. 

" It was thought best to let the matter take another course. No 
other name could have been put on the ticket so bitterly humbling 
to me as that which was selected. The nomination was given to 
Eaymond; the fight left to me. And, Governor Seward, / have 
made it, though it be conceited in me to say so. What little fight 
there has been I have stirred up. Even Weed has not been (I 
speak of his paper) hearty in this contest, while the journal of the 
Whig Lieutenant-Governor has taken care of its own interests and 
let the canvass take care of itself, as it early declared it would do. 
That journal has (because of its milk-and-water course) some 
twenty thousand subscribers in this city and its suburbs, and, of 
these twenty thousand, I venture to say more voted for UUmann 
and Scroggs than for Clark and Raymond ; the Tribune (also be- 
cause of its character) has but eight thousand subscribers within 
the same radius, and I venture to say that of its habitual readers 
nine tenths voted for Clark and Raymond, — very few for Ullraann 
and Scroggs. I had to bear the brunt of the contest, and take a 
terrible responsibiUty in order to prevent the Whigs uniting upon 
James W. Barker in order to defeat Fernando Wood. Had Barker 
been elected here, neither you nor I could walk these streets with- 
out being hooted, and Know-Nothingism would have swept like a 
prairie-fire. I stopped Barker's election at the cost of incurring 
the deadliest enmity of the defeated gang; and I have been re- 
buked for it by the Lieutenant-Governor's paper. At the critical 
moment, he came out against John Wheeler in favor of Charles H. 
Marshall (who would have been your deadhest enemy in the 
House), and even your Colonel General's paper, which was even 
with me in insisting that Wheeler should be returned, wheeled 



452 GREELEY AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION OF I860. 

about at the last moment and went in for Marshall, — the Tribune 
alone clinging to Wheeler till the last. I rejoice that they who 
turned so suddenly were not able to turn all their readers. 

" Grovernor Seward, I know that some of your most cherished 
friends think me a great obstacle to your advancement; that 
John Schoolcraft, for one, insists that you and Weed shall not be 
identified with me. I trust, after a time, you will not be. I trust 
I shall never be found in opposition to you ; I have no further wish 
but to glide out of the newspaper world as quietly and as speedily 
as possible, join my family in Europe, and if possible stay there 
quite a time, — long enough to cool my fevered brain and renovate 
my overtasked energies. All I ask is that we shall be counted 
even on the morning after the first Tuesday in February, as afore- 
said, and that I may thereafter take such course as seems best 
without reference to the past. 

" You have done me acts of valued kindness in the line of your 
profession : let me close with the assurance that these will ever be 
gratefully remembered by Yours, 

"Horace Greeley. 

" Hon. William H. Seward, present." 

Tn commenting upon this letter, Mr. Greeley contended that it 
did not justify the accusation that his motive in opposing Mr. Sew- 
ard was personal, still less malignant. He concluded his remarks 
upon it in the following terms : — 

"A single word of improvement to the young and ardent politi- 
cians who may read my letter and this comment. The moral I would 
inculcate is a trite one, but none the less important. It is summed 
up in the Scriptural injunction, 'Put not your trust in princes.' 
Men, even the best, are frail and mutable, while principle is sure 
and eternal. Be no man's man but Truth's and your country's. 
You will be sorely tempted at times to take this or that great man 
for your oracle and guide, — it is easy and tempting to lean, to fol- 
low, and to trust, — but it is safer and wiser to look ever through 
your own eyes, to tread your own path, to trust imphcitly in 
God alone. The atmosphere is a little warmer inside some great 
man's castle, but the free air of heaven is ever so much purer and 
more bracing. My active political life may be said to have begun 
with Governor Seward's appearance on the broader stage ; for I 
edited my first political sheet (The Constitution) in 1834, when 



COMMENTS OF THURLOW WEED. 453 

he was first a candidate for G-overnor, and I very ardently labored 
in 1854 to secure his re-election to the Senate. Thenceforward I 
have had no idol, but have acted without personal bias as the high- 
est public good has from time to time seemed to me to demand. 
I have dififered frankly with Governor Seward on some financial 
points; but I think have uttered more praise with less blame of 
him than of any other living statesman. I have been reminded of 
late that the Tribune has once or twice seemed to resent his treat- 
ment in the Senate of Rust's assault on me ; but 1 certainly never 
alluded to that, and I am confident that the strictures instanced 
must have been published while I was absent from the city. The 
matter never seemed to me worth a paragraph. And if ever in my 
life I discharged a public- duty in utter disregard of personal con- 
siderations, I did so at Chicago last month. I was no longer a 
devotee of Governor Seward; but I was equally independent of 
all others; and if I had been swayed by feeling alone, I should 
have, for many reasons, preferred him to any of his competitors. 
Our personal intercourse, as well since as before my letter herewith 
published, had always been frank and kindly, and I was never in- 
sensible to his many good and some great qualities, both of head 
and heart. But I did not and do not believe it advisable that he 
should be the Republican candidate for President; and I acted in 
full accordance with my deliberate convictions. Need I add, that 
•each subsequent day's developments have tended to strengthen my 
confidence that what I did was not only well meant, but well 
done?" 

And now, having given Mr, Greeley's version of this painful con- 
troversy, it is proper to give that of another partner in the political 
firm, Mr. Thurlow Weed, then the editor of the Albany Evening 
Journal. 

THURLOW WEED ON HORACE GREELEY'S LETTER 
TO MR. SEWARD. 

" There are some things in this letter requiring explanation, — all things in 
it, indeed, are susceptible of explanations consistent with Governor Seward's 
full appreciation of Mr. Greeley's friendship and services. The letter was 
evidently written under a morbid state of feeling, and it is less a matter of 
surprise that such a letter was thus written, than that its writer should not 
only cherish the ill-will that prompted it, for six years, but allow it to influ- 
ence his action upon a question which concerns his party and his country. 



454 GREELEY AT THE CHICAGK) CONVENTION OP 1860. 

" Mr. Greeley's first complaint is that this journal, in an ' editorial rescript 
formally read me [him] out of the Whig party.'' 

" Now here is the ' editorial rescript formally reading ' Mr. Greeley out of 
the Whig party. 

" [From the Evening Journal of Sept. 6, 1853.] 

" ' The Tribune defines its position in reference to the approaching election. 
Regarding the "Maine Law" as a question of paramount importance, it will 
support members of the Legislature friendly to its passage, irrespective of 
party. 

" ' For State oflicers the Tribune will support such men as it deems compe- 
tent and trustworthy, irrespective also of party, and without regard to the 
" Maine Law." 

*" In a word, the Tribune avows itself, for the present, if not forever, an 
independent journal (it was pretty much so always), discarding party "usages, 
mandates, and platforms." 

" ' We regret to lose, in the Tribune, an old, able, and efficient colaborer 
in the Whig vineyard. But when carried away by its convictions of duty to 
others, and, in its judgment, higher and more beneficent objects, we have as 
little right as inclination to complain. The Tribune takes with it, wher- 
ever it goes, an indomitable and powerful pen, a devoted, a noble, and an un- 
selfish zeal. Its senior editor evidently supposes himself permanently di- 
vorced from the Whig party, but we shall be disappointed if, after a year or 
two's sturdy pulling at the oar of Reform, he does not return to his long-cher- 
ished belief that gi-eat and beneficent aims must continue, as they commenced, 
to be wrought out through Whig instrumentalities. 

" ' But we only intended to say that the Tribune openly and frankly avows 
its intention and policy ; and that in things about which we cannot agree, we 
can and will disagree as friends.' 

" Pray read this article again, if its purpose and import be not clearly under- 
stood! At the time it appeared, the Tribune was under high-pressure ' Maine- 
Law' speed. That question, in Mr. Greeley's view, was paramount to all oth- 
ers. It was the Tribune's 'higher law.' Mr. Greeley had given warning, in 
his Tribune, that he should support ' Maine-Law ' candidates for the Legisla- 
ture, and for State offices, regardless of their political or party principles and 
character. And this, too, when the Senators to be elected had to choose a 
Senator in Congi-ess. But instead of 'reading' Mr. Greeley 'out of the Whig 
party,' it will be seen that after ^Ir. Greeley had read himself out of the party 
by discarding ' party usages, mandates, and platforms,' the Evening Journal, 
in the language and spirit of frielidship, predicted just what happened, viz. 
that, in due time, Mr. Greeley would '■return to his long-cherished belief that 
great and beneficent aims must continue, as they commenced, to be wrought out 
through Whig instrumentalities.^ 

"We submit, even to Mr. Greeley himself, whether there is one word or 
thought in the article to which he refeiTcd justifying his accusation that he 
had been ' read out of the Whig party ' by the Evening Jounial. 

" When, in December, 1837, we sought the acquaintance and co-operation 



COMMENTS OF THURLOW WEED. 455 

of Mr. Greeley, we were, like him, a ' poor printer,' working as hard as he 
worked. We had then been sole editor, reporter, news collector, ' remarkable 
accident,' * horrid murder,' ' items ' man, &c., &c., for seven years, at a salary 
of $ 750, $ 1,000, $ 1,250, and $ 1,500. We had also been working hard, for 
poor pay, as an editor and politician, for the twelve years preceding 1830. We 
stood, therefore, on the same footing with Mr. Greeley when the partnership 
was formed. We knew that Mr. Greeley was much abler, more indomitably 
industi-ious, and, as we believed, a better man in all respects. We foresaw 
for him a brilliant future ; and, if we had not started with utterly erroneous 
views of his objects, we do not believe that our relations would have jarred. 
We believed him indifterent alike to the temptations of money and office, de- 
siring only to become both ' useful ' and ' ornamental,' as the editor of a patri- 
otic, enlightened, leading, and influential public journal. For years, there- 
fore, we placed Horace Greeley far above the ' swell-mob ' of office-seekers, for 
whom, in his letter, he expresses so much contempt. Had Governor Seward 
known, in 1848, that Mr. Greeley coveted an ' inspectorship,' he certainly 
would have received it. Indeed, if our memory be not at fault, Mr. Greeley 
was offered the Clerkship of the Assembly in 1838. It was certainly pressed 
upon us, and though at that time, like Mr. Greeley, ' desperately poor,' it was 
declined. 

" We cannot think that Mr. Greeley's political friends, after the Tribune was 
under way, knew that he needed the ' pecuniary aid ' which had been promised. 
When, about that period, we suggested to him (after consulting some of the 
Board) that the printing of the Common Council might be obtained, he refused 
to have anything to do with it. 

" In relation to the State printing, Mr. Greeley knows that there never was 
a day when, if he had chosen to come to Albany, he might not have taken 
whatever interest he pleased in the Journal and its State printing. But he 
wisely regarded his position in New York, and the future of the Tribune, as 
far the most desirable. 

" For the ' creation of the new office for the Times ' Mr. Greeley knows per- 
fectly well that Governor Seward was in no manner responsible. 

" That Mr. Greeley should make the adjustment of the libel suit of Messrs. 
Redfield and Pringle against the Tribune a ground of accusation against Gov- 
ernor Seward is matter of astonishment. Governor Seward undertook the 
settlement of that suit as the friend of Mr. Greeley, at a time when a sys- 
tematic effort was being made to destroy both the Tribune and Evening Jour- 
na,l, by prosecutions for libel. We were literally plastered over with writs, 
declarations. &c. There were at least two judges of the Supreme Court in 
the State, on whom plaintiffs were at liberty to count for verdicts. Governor 
Seward tendered his professional services to Mr. Greeley, and in the case re- 
ferred to, as in others, foiled the adversary. For such seiwice this seems a 
strange requital. Less fortunate than the Tribune, it cost the Evening Jour- 
nal over $ 8,000 to reach a point in legal proceedings that enabled a defend- 
ant in a libel suit to give the truth in evidence. 

" It was by no fault or neglect or wish of Governor Seward that Mr. Greeley 



456 GREELEY AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION OP 1860. 

served but 'ninety days in Congress.' Nor will we say what others have 
said, that his Congressional debut was ' a failure.' There were other reasons, 
and this seems a fitting occasion to' state them. Mr. Greeley's ' isms ' were in 
his way at conventions. The ' sharp points ' and ' rough edges ' of the Tribune 
rendered him unacceptable to those who nominate candidates. This was more 
so formerly than at present, for most of the rampant reforms to which the 
Tribune was devoted have subsided. But we had no sympathy with, and 
little respect for, a constituency that preferred 'Jim Brooks' to Horace 
Greeley. 

" Nearly forty years of experience leaves us in some doubt whether, with 
political friends, an open, frank, and truthful, or a cautious, calculating, non- 
committal course is (not the right, but) the easiest and most politic? The 
former, which we have chosen, has made us much trouble and many enemies. 
Few candidates are able to bear the truth, or to believe that the friend who 
utters it is truly one. 

" In 1854 the Tribune, through years of earnest effort, had educated the peo- 
ple up to the point of demanding a ' Maine Law ' candidate for Governor. 
But its followei-s would not accept their Chief Reformer! It was evident 
that the State Convention was to be largely influenced by ' Maine Law ' and 
' Choctaw ' Know-Nothing delegates. It was equally evident that Mr. Gree- 
ley could neither be nominated nor elected. Hence the conference to which 
he refers. We found, as on two other occasions during thirty years, our 
State Convention impracticable. We submitted the names of Lieutenant- 
Governor Patterson and Jixdge Han-is (both temperance men in faith and 
practice) as candidates for Governor, coupled with that of Mr. Greeley for 
Lieutenant-Governor. But the ' Maine Law ' men would have ' none of these,' 
preferring MjTon H. Clark (who used up the raw material of temperance), 
qualified by H. J. Raymond for Lieutenant-Governor. 

" What Mr. Greeley says of the relative zeal and efficiency of the Tribune 
and Times, and of our own feelings in that contest, is true. We did our 
duty, but with less of enthusiasm than when we were supporting either 
Granger, Seward, Bradish, Hunt, Fish, King, or Morgan for Governor. 

" One word in relation to the supposed ' political firm.' Mr. Greeley 
brought into it his full quota of capital. But were there no beneficial results, 
no accruing advantages, to himself? Did he not attain, in the sixteen years, 
a high position, a world-wide reputation, and an ample fortune ? Admit, as 
we do, that he (Mr. Greeley) is not as wealthy as we wish he was, it is not be- 
cause the Tribune has not made his fortune, but because he did not keep it, 
— because it went, as other people's money goes, to friends, to pay indorse 
ments, and in bad investments. 

•' We have both been liberally, nay, generously, sustained by our party. Mr. 
Greeley differs with us in regarding patrons of newspapers as conferring fa- 
vors. In giving them the worth of their money, he holds that the account is 
balanced. W^e, on the other hand, have ever held the relation of newspaper 
editor and subscriber as one of fraternity. Viewed in this aspect, the editors 
)f the Tribune and Evening Journal have manifold reasons for cherishmg 



COMMENTS OF THURLOW WEED. 457 

grateful recollections of the liberal and abiding confidence and patronage of 
their party and friends. 

" In conclusion, we cannot withhold an expression of sincere regret that this 
letter has been called out. Having remained six years in ' blissful ignorance ' 
of its contents, we should much preferred to have ever remained so. It jars 
hai-shly upon cherished memories. It destroys ideals of disinterestedness and 
generosity which relieved political life from so much that is selfish, sordid, 
and rapacious." 

Mr. G-reeley again denied the charge of personal hostihtj to Mr. 
Seward, " The most careful scavenger of private letters," he wrote 
in reply to Mr. Weed, " or the most sneaking eavesdropper that 
ever listened to private conversation, cannot allege a single reason 
for any personal hostihty on my part against Mr. Seward. I have 
never received from him anything but exceeding kindness and 
courtesy. He has done me favors (not of a pohtical nature) in a 
manner which made them still more obhging ; and I should regard 
the loss of his friendship as a very serious loss. Notwithstanding 
this, I could not support him for President. I like Mr. Seward 
personally, but I love the party and its principles more. Success 
for these seemed to me to be a duty, for I have never subscribed 
to the modern -doctrine that defeat with one good man is better 
than victory with another equally trustworthy." 

It was charged by a leading journal that Mr. Greeley's course 
at Chicago was influenced by the fact that Mr. Seward had but 
coldly rebuked Albert Rust for his assault upon the editor of the 
Tribune, in the streets of Washington. This also Mr. G-reeley de- 
nied. "I have not," said he, "thought of the matter for at least 
two years past, except when it was raised in my presence by some 
one else ; and in every such case I have discouraged any attempt 
to magnify it into importance. On the spirit and good taste of 
Governor Seward's remarks in the Senate on the Rust affair I 
have no opinion to express : but this is a very small matter to be 
thrust into a canvass for a Presidential nomination. It has never 
had with me the weight of a butterfly's wing, and I am certain 
that I never spoke of it to any one, save responsively, and never 
once thought of it at Chicago." 

Among the ridiculous consequences of Mr. Greeley's conduct was 

the following correspondence : — 

" Aurora, N. Y., May 19, 1860. 
•* Editors Tribune : — 

" Gentlemen: — We have taken the Tribune daily firom the morning of its 

first issue until now, through all its isms. 



458 GREELEY AT THE CHICAGO CONVENTION OF 1860. 

" You mil discontinue sending it to us. Our only regret in parting is that we 
are under the necessity of losing a three-cent stamp in order to close our ac- 
count. 
" Wishing you a good time for a few months to come, 
" We are truly yours, 

" Morgan & Mosher." 

REPLY. 

" New York, May 22, 1860. 
" Gentlemen : — The painful regret expressed in yours of the 
19th instant excites my sympathies. I enclose you a three-cent 
stamp, to replace that whose loss you deplore, and remain, 
"Yours, placidly, 

•' Horace Gtreelet. 
" Messrs. Morgan & Mosher, Aurora, Cayuga Co., N. Y." 

The friends of Mr. Seward had not long to wait for their revenge. 
In February, 1861, Mr. G-reeley was a leading candidate of the Re- 
pubUcan party to represent the State of New York in the Senate 
of the United States. His rival for a nomination by the Republi- 
can caucus was William M. Evarts, a distinguished lawyer of the 
city of New York. In a caucus of one hundred and fifteen mem- 
bers, the friends of these two candidates were so evenly divided, 
that, after eight ballotings, there appeared httle hope of either being 
selected. On the tenth ballot the friends of Mr. Evarts abandoned 
their candidate, and cast their votes for Judge Ira Harris of Albany, 
which secured his nomination. During this contest Mr. Thurlow 
Weed was in another room of the State Capitol. Perhaps the best 
way of explaining why he was there wiU be to copy the following 
despatch from the New York Herald, dated Albany, February 2d, 
midnight : — 

" This has been one of the most exciting days of the session. 
The like wiU not be seen at the Capitol for many a day. During 
the afternoon everybody appeared to be on the run, and the doubt- 
ful members were besieged at every turn. The lobbies and halls 
at the Capitol were crowded to overflowing at the opening of the 
caucus. Weed stationed himself in the Grovernor's room, and, after 
the first ballot, a continuous Une was seen going back and forth. 
The first ballot proved that my canvass was not four out of the 
way, and its announcement was as a wet sheet upon the Evarts 
side. For eight long ballots, the friends of each watched the an- 



THE COMMENTS OF THURLOW WEED. 459 

nouncement, to see who had changed ; but not until the eighth bal- 
lot could there be found any evidence whether Greeley or Evarts 
would rally. On that, Greeley gained five, and in a moment the 
Harris tickets were started by the Weed men. The fact being 
known that there was a break in the line caused intense excite- 
ment. Throughout the ninth ballot everybody was on their feet 
moving about. The ballot revealed a wonderful change of front. 

" The forty-nine votes recorded for Harris made his nomination 
certain on the next ballot. 

" The moment it was known that he received sixty votes, there 
was a rush for Weed. He was pulled out of the Governor's room, 
and completely surrounded." 

At this point the feud between these old friends ought to have 
ended. Each of them had been instrumental in defeating the cher- 
ished object of the other. They ought to have called it even, 
shaken hands, and worked together for the country. But human 
passions are not so easily allayed; and from political opponents 
they had the misfortune to become personal enemies. 

The following paragraphs from the Tribune may serve to com- 
plete the history of these events. 

" The Albany Evening Journal says : — 

" * The Postmaster-Generalship was once, it is said, a pet aspiration of the 
editor-in-chief of the Tribune.' 

" ' The editor-in-chief of the Tribune ' having been designated by 
several influential Republicans for Postmaster-General, in Novem- 
ber last authorized the Honorable Schuyler Colfax to convey to the 
President elect his decided veto on that selection. This was be- 
fore it was known that Governor Seward had reconsidered his 
original determination to accept no office under Mr. Lincoln. 

" Even the Evening Journal will not say that it would have been 
presumptuous in the editor aforesaid to have aspired to ofiice at the 
hands of the new President, The fact that he did not seek any such 
office, but early and decidedly informed those friends who suggested 
the matter to him that he would not be a candidate for any office 
whatever, is known to many. So much for that point. 

" The Journal says that Mr. Lincoln appointed Mr. Seward, 

"'Against the persistent protestations of those who concurred with the 
Tribune.' 



460 GREELEY AT THE CHICAGb CONVENTION OF 1860. 

" Shuffling as this charge is, it is essentially false. The Tribune 
promptly and heartily approved the selection of Grovernor Seward 
for the State Department. It early and sincerely offered to sup- 
port his re-election to the Senate, while it was understood that Mr. 
S. would take no appointment. It never in any manner opposed 
his selection for the Cabinet, or for whatever post under President 
Lincoln he might choose to accept. It has dissented from the pol- 
icy to which he has recently committed himself, but never sought 
to bar his elevation to the honorable post assigned him, and which 
we trust he will fill with eminent usefulness and honor." 

Perhaps I may add, that a few days after the election of Mr. Lin- 
coln, in November, 1860, I myself heard Mr. G-reeley say : "If my 
advice should be asked respecting Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet, I should 
recommend the appointment of Seward as Secretary of State. It 
is the place for him, and he will do honor to the country in it" 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

DURING THE WAR. 

Mr Greeley's opinions upon Secession before the war began — ^The battle of Bull Run — 
Correspondence with President Lincoln — His peace negotiations — Assault upon the 
Tribune ofl&ce — Indorses the proffer of the French mission to the editor of the Herald 
— He writes a history of the war — He offers prizes for improved fruits. 

Horace Greeley was slow to believe that the fire-eaters of the 
South meant to bring the controversy to the issue of arms. He 
had been accustomed from his boyhood to hear threats of secession 
at every Presidential election, and he was now disposed to regard 
the menacing attitude as part of the system of bluster by which the 
South for so many years had controlled the pohtics of the country. 
In commenting upon the proceedings in South Carolina, he held 
language which was misunderstood both by friends and foes. Quot- 
ing the passage from the Declaration of Independence, that govern- 
ments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, 
he added : — 

"We do heartily accept this doctrine, believing it intrinsically 
sound, beneficent, and one that, universally accepted, is calculated 
to prevent the shedding of seas of human blood. And if it justified 
the secession from the British Empire of three millions of Colonists 
in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of 
five milhons of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. If we 
are mistaken on this point, why does not some one attempt to show 
wherein and why ? For our own part, while we deny the right of 
slaveholders to hold slaves against the wiU of the latter, we can- 
not see how twenty millions of people can rightfully hold ten, or 
even five, in a detested union with them, by military force. 

" Of course, we understand that the principle of Jefierson, like 
any other broad generalization, may be pushed to extreme and 
baleful consequences. We can see why Governor's Island should 
not be at hberty to secede from the State and Nation, and allow 
herself to be covered with French and British batteries command- 
ing and threatening our city. There is hardly a great principle 
which may not be thus ' ruji into the ground.' But if seven or 

461 



462 DURING THE WAR. 

eight contiguous States shall present themselves authentically at 
Washington, saying, 'We hate the Federal Union; we have with- 
drawn from it; we give you the choice between acquiescing in our 
secession and arranging amicably all incidental questions on the one 
hand, and attempting to subdue us on the other,' — we could not 
stand up for coercion, for subjugation, for we do not think it would 
be just. We hold the right of self-government sacred, even when 
invoked in behalf of those who deny it to others. So much for the 
question of principle. 

" Now as to the matter of policy : — 

" South Carolina will certainly secede. Several other Cotton 
States will probably follow her example. The Border States are 
evidently reluctant to do likewise. South Carolina has grossly in- 
sulted them by her dictatorial, reckless course. What she expects 
and desires is a clash of arms with the Federal government, which 
will at once commend her to the sympathy and co-operation of 
every Slave State, and to the sympathy (at least) of the pro-slavery 
minority in the Free States. It is not difficult to see that this 
would speedily work a political revolution, which would restore to 
slavery all, and more than all, it has lost by the canvass of 1860. 
We want to obviate this. We would expose the seceders to odium 
as disunionists, not commend them to pity as the gallant though 
mistaken upholders of the rights of their section in an unequal mili- 
tary conflict. 

" We fully realize that the dilemma of the incoming administra- 
tion will be a critical one. It must endeavor to uphold and enforce 
the laws, as well against rebelUous slaveholders as fugitive slaves. 
The new President must fulfil the obligations assumed in his in- 
auguration oath, no matter how shamefully his predecessor may 
have defied them. We fear that Southern madness may precipitate 
a bloody collision that all must deplore. But if ' ever seven or eight 
States ' send agents to Washington to say, ' We want to get out of 
the Union,' we shall feel constrained by our devotion to human lib- 
erty to say, 'Let them go ! ' And we do not see how we could take 
the other side without coming in direct conflict with those rights 
of man which we hold paramount to all pohtical arrangements, 
however convenient and advantageous." 

These remarks appeared in the Tribune of December 17, 1860. 
On the 24th of the same month he hel^ the following language : — 



MR. GREELEY'S OPINIONS OF SECESSION. 463 

"We believe that governments are made for peoples, not peoples 
for governments, — that the latter ' derive their just power from 
the consent of the governed ' ; and whenever a portion of this 
Union, large enough to form an independent self-subsisting nation, 
shall see fit to say, authentically, to the residue, ' We want to gel 
away from you,' we shall say, — and we trust self-respect, if not 
regard for the principle of self-government, will constrain the resi- 
due of the American people to say, — ' Go ! ' We never yet had 
so poor an opinion of ourselves or our neighbors as to wish to 
hold others in a hated connection with us. But the dissolution of 
a government cannot be effected in the time required for knocking 
down a house of cards. Let the Cotton States, or any six or more 
States, say unequivocally, ' We want to get out of the Union,' and 
propose to effect their end peaceably and inoffensively, and we will 
do our best to help them out ; not that we want them to go, but 
that we loathe the idea of compelling them to stay. All we ask is, 
that they exercise a reasonable patience, so as to give time for 
effecting their end without bloodshed." 

Such editorials as these, though sincere, well meant, and unan- 
swerable, appear to belong to the class of nothings which the edi- 
tor of a daily paper is frequently obliged to utter, when the public 
mind is at once excited and undecided. He knew perfectly well, 
as we all did, that the question of secession could not be discussed 
at the South, and would never be fairly submitted to the people, 
and that there would be no such thing as a calm and peaceful wait- 
ing for the action of the people and government. " I do not be- 
lieve," he wrote January 21, 1861, "in the unanimity of the South 
in favor of secession, because the conspirators evidently do not be- 
lieve in it themselves. If they did, they would eagerly and proudly 
submit the question of secession to a direct vote of the people of 
their respective States ; but this, even in South Carohna, they dare 
not do. Wherever they have assented to a popular vote, they have 
done so with manifest reluctance, and only because they needs 
must." 

And again on the same day : " What I demand is proof that the 
Southern people really desire separation from the Free States, 
Whenever assured that such is their settled wish, I shall joyfully 
co-operate with them to secure the end they seek. Thus far, I 
have had evidence of nothing but a purpose to bully and coerce 



464 DURING THj: WAR. 

the North. Many of the secession emissaries to the Border Slave 
States tell the people they address that they do not really mean to 
dissolve the Union, but only to secure what they term their rights 
in the Union. Now, as nearly all the people of the Slave States 
either are, or have to seem to be, in favor of this, the present men- 
acing front of secession proves nothing to the purpose. Maryland 
and Virginia have no idea of breaking up the Union ; but they 
would both dearly hke to bully the North into a compromise. 
Their secession demonstrations prove just this, and nothing more." 

In the same article he said : " I deny to one State, or to a dozen 
different States, the right to dissolve this Union. It can only be 
legally dissolved as it was formed, — by the free consent of all the 
parties concerned. A State enters the Union by a compact to 
which she on the one side, and a constitutional majority in the 
Federal councils on the other, are the parties. She can only go 
out by like concurrence or by revolution. It is anarchy even to 
admit the right *of secession. It is to degrade our Union into a 
mere alliance, and insure its speedy ruin." 

As late as the day of the inauguration Mr. Lincoln expected a 
peaceful solution of our difficulties, and expressed this opinion in 
conversation to Mr. G-reeley and other friends. 

In a very few weeks, however, the question of peace or war was 
decided in Charleston Harbor, and from that hour the Tribune 
gave unreserved and most able support to the suppression of the 
Rebellion by arms. 

The battle of Bull Run nearly cost the editor of the Tribune his 
life. Some of the more ardent spirits in the office, impatient of 
delay, kept constantly standing on the editorial page a paragraph 
like this : — 

THE NATION'S WAR-CRY. 

'''■Forward to Richmond! Forward to Richmond! The Rebel 
Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th July! By 
that datk the place must be held by the national 
Army ! " 

When the disaster occurred, so unexpected and so crushing, Mr. 
Greeley was almost beside himself with horror. To the natural 
dread of war and bloodshed which every civilized being feels, and 
he more than most, was added, perhaps, some contrition for having 



THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 465 

permitted the paper to goad the government into an advance which 
events showed to be either too late or premature. He did not, 
however, dechne the responsibihty attached to his position. "I 
wish, "he wrote, July 25, 1861, "to be distinctly understood as 
not seekiLg to be relieved from any responsibihty for urging the 
advance of the Union Grand Army into Virginia, though the watch- 
word 'Forward to Richmond' was not mine, and I would have 
preferred not to iterate it. I thought that army, one hundred thou- 
sand strong, might have been in the Rebel capital on or before the 
20th instant, while I felt sure that there were urgent reasons why 
it should be there, if possible. And now, if any one imagines that 
I, or any one connected with the Tribune, ever commended or im- 
agined any such strategy as the launching barely thirty of the one 
hundred thousand Union volunteers, within fifty miles of Wash- 
ington, against ninety thousand Rebels, enveloped in a labyrinth 
of strong intrenchments and unreconnoitred masked batteries, then 
demonstration would be lost on his ear. But I will not dwell on 
this. If I am needed as a scapegoat for all the military blunders 
of the last month, so be it ! Individuals must die that the Nation 
may live. If I can serve her best in that capacity, I do not shrink 
from the ordeal." 

He retired to his farm a few days after, and was soon prostrated 
by an attack of brain fever, and for six weeks was scarcely con- 
scious of passing events. His wonderful constitution has never 
been so severely tried, and he narrowly escaped the loss of his life 
or reason. 

Horace G-reeley was among the first to reach the conviction that 
the Rebellion could not be suppressed without the aid of the black 
man. In August, 1862, after the defeat of General McClellan and 
his retreat fi-om the Chickahominy, he addressed a letter through 
the Tribune to the President, entitled "The Prayer of Twenty 
Millions," which urged the President to execute the law which 
gave freedom to the slave coming within our lines, and to enforce 
the confiscation act. "We must," said he, "have scouts, guides, 
spies, cooks, teamsters, diggers, and choppers from the blacks of the 
South, — whether we allow them to fight for us or not, — or we 
shall be baffled and repelled." The President, thus pubHcly appealed 
to, thought proper publicly to reply, in the terms following : — 

30 



466 DURING ^HE WAR. 

" Executive Mansion, Washington, August 22, 1862. 
"Hon. Horace Greeley: — 

"Dear Sir: — I have just read yours of tke 19th, addressed to myself 
through the New York Tribune. If diere be in it any statements or assump- 
tions of fact which I may know to be erroneous, I do not now and here con- 
trovert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may beUeve to be 
falsely drawn, I do not now and here argue against them. If there be percep- 
tible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old 
friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right. 

" As to the policy I ' seem to be pursuing,' as you say, I have not meant tc 
leave any one in doubt. 

" I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Con- 
stitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the 
Union will be ' the Union as it was.' If there be those who would not save 
the Union unless they could at the same time save shivery, I do not agi-ee with 
them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at 
the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount ob- 
ject in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy 
slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; 
and if I could save it by freemg all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do 
it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do 
about slavery and the colored race. I do because I believe it helps to save this 
Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to 
save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts 
the cause, and I shall do mo7'e whenever I shall believe doing more will help 
the cause. I shall try to con-ect errors when shown to be errors; and I shall 
adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here 
stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no mod- 
ification of my oft-expressed /)ersonaZ wish that all men, everywhere, could be 

free. 

" Yours, A. Lincoln." 

To this letter Mr. G-reeley published the following reply : — 
"Dear Sir: — Although I did not anticipate nor seek any reply 
to my former letter unless through your official acts, I thank you 
for having accorded one, since it enables me to say explicitly that 
nothing was further from my thought than to impeach in any man- 
ner the sincerity or the intensity of your devotion to the saving of 
the Union. I never doubted, and have no friend who doubts, that 
you desire, before and above all else, to re-establish the now de- 
rided authority, and vindicate the territorial integrity, of the Ee- 
pubHc. I intended to raise only this question, — Do you propose to 
do this by recognizing, obeying, and enforcing the laws, or by ignoringy 
disregarding, and in effect defying them ? 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 467 

" I stand upon the law of the land. The humblest has a clear 
right to invoke its protection and support against even the highest. 
That law — in strict accordance with the law of nations, of Nature, 
and of G-od — declares that every traitor now engaged in the infer- 
nal work of destroying our country has forfeited thereby all claim 
or color of right lawfully to hold human beings in slavery. I ask 
of you a clear and public recognition that this law is to be obeyed 
wherever the national authority is respected. I cite to you in- 
stances wherein men fleeing from bondage to traitors to the pro- 
tection of our flag have been assaulted, wounded, and murdered by 
soldiers of the Union, unpunished and unrebuked by your General 
Commanding, — to prove that it is your duty to take action in the 
premises, — action that will cause the law to be proclaimed and 
obeyed wherever your authority or that of the Union is recognized 
as paramount. The Rebellion is strengthened, the national cause 
is imperilled, by every hour's delay to strike Treason this staggering 
blow. 

" When Fremont proclaimed freedom to the slaves of rebels, you 
constrained him to modify his proclamation into rigid accordance 
with the terms of the existing law. It was your clear right to do 
so. I now ask of you conformity to the principle so sternly en- 
forced upon him. I ask you to instruct your generals and com- 
modores, that no loyal person — certainly none wilhng to render 
service to the national caufse — is henceforth to be regarded as the 
slave of any traitor. "While no rightful government was ever be- 
fore assailed by so wanton and wicked a rebelhon as that of the 
slaveholders against our national life, I am sure none ever before 
hesitated at so simple and primary an act of self-defence, as to re- 
lieve those who would serve and save it from chattel servitude to 
those who are wading through seas of blood to subvert and destroy 
it. Future generations will with difficulty realize that there could 
have been hesitation on this point. Sixty years of general and 
boundless subserviency to the slave power do not adequately ex- 
plain it. 

" Mr. President, I beseech you to open your eyes to the fact that 
the devotees of slavery everywhere — just as much in Maryland as 
in Mississippi, in Washington as in Richmond — are to-day your 
enemies, and the implacable foes of every effort to re-establish the 
national authority by the discomfiture of its assailants. Their 



468 DURING THE WAR. 

President is not Abraham Lincoln, but Jefferson Davis. Yen may 
draft them to serve in the war ; but they will only fight under the 
Rebel flag. There is not in New York to-day a man who really 
believes in slavery, loves it, and desires its perpetuation, who 
heartily desires the crushing out of the Rebellion. He would much 
rather save the Republic by buying up and pensioning off its assail- 
ants. His ' Union as it was ' is a Union of which you were not 
President, and no one who truly wished freedom to all ever 
could be. 

" If these are truths, Mr. President, they are surely of the gravest 
importance. You cannot safely approach the great and good end 
you so intently meditate by shutting your eyes to them. Your 
deadly foe is not blinded by any mist in which your eyes may be 
enveloped. He walks straight to his goal, knowing well his weak 
point, and most unwillingly betraying his fear that you too may see 
and take advantage of it. Grod grant that his apprehension may 
prove prophetic ! 

" That you may not unseasonably perceive these vital truths as 
they will shine forth on the pages of history, — that they may be 
read by our children irradiated by the glory of our national salva- 
tion, not rendered lurid by the blood-red glow of national confla- 
gration and ruin, — that you may promptly and practically realize 
that slavery is to be vanquished only by liberty, — is the fervent 
and anxious prayer of 

" Yours truly, 

"Horace G-reelet. 

"New York, August 24, 1862." 

Twenty-nine days after the date of this reply the Proclamation 
of Emancipation was issued. I do not believe that before its ap- 
pearance Mr. G-reeley ever had any comfortable assurance that the 
United States would triumph over its enemies ; but from that day 
he was generally confident of a favorable issue. A day or two after 
the Proclamation was published I met him in Broadway, his coun- 
tenance beaming with exultation, and he expressed in the strongest 
language his conviction that the ultimate triumph of the nation was 
certain. 

Mr. Greeley's efforts for the restoration of peace are well remem- 
bered. He was first addressed on this subject in December, 1862, 
^lad be thus relates the circumstances. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 469 

"We were approached," he says, "by parties favorable to peace, 
and entreated to contribute to its attainment. Having always been 
most anxious for the earliest possible peace consistent with fidelity 
to those hopes for humanity which are bound up in the life of the 
American Republic, we listened to the appeal, and resolved to do 
our utmost toward the achievement of a tolerable peace. To that 
end we labored faithfully so long as any hope of attaining it re- 
mained, willing to brave the anger and alienation of valued friends 
if we might, at whatever personal cost, contribute to an early con- 
clusion of this desolating war, A private letter, which we wrote 
at that time by his request, to the most active agitator for peace, 
having been given to the public by him, most unwarrantably, has 
been widely quoted by our political and personal adversaries as 
evincing an undue anxiety for peace. It is as follows : — 

" ' New York, January 2, 1863. 
" ' W. C. Jewett, Esq., Wasliington, D. C. : — 

" ' Dear Sir : — In whatever you may do to restore peace to our distracted 
country, bear these things in mind : — 

" ' 1. Whatever action is taken must be between the government of the 
United States and the accredited authorities of the Confederates. There must 
be no negotiations or conditions between unofficial persons. All you can do 
is to render authorized negotiations possible by opening a way for them. 

" ' 2. In such negotiations our government cannot act without a trusted 
though informal assurance that the Confederates have taken the initiative. 
The rupture originated with them ; they must evince a preliminary willing- 
ness to make peace; and, on being assured that this is reciprocated, they must 
initiate the formal proposition. 

" ' 3. If arbitration shall be resorted to, these conditions must be respected: 
First. The arbiter must be a power which has evinced no partiality or un- 
friendliness to either party. Second. One that has no interest in the partition 
or downfall of our country. Third. One that does not desire the failure of the 
republican principle in government. Great Britain and France are necessarily 
excluded by their having virtually confessed their wishes that we shoidd be 
divided ; and Louis Napoleon has an especial interest in proving republics im- 
practicable. For if the republican is a legitimate, beneficent form of govern- 
ment, what must be the verdict of history on the destroyer of the French 
Republic? 

" ' You will find, I think, no hearty supporter of the Union who wiU agree 
that our government shall act in the premises, except on a frank, open propo- 
sition from the Confederates, proposing arbitration by a friendly power or 
powers. I can consider no man a friend of the Union who makes a parade 
of peace propositions or peace agitation prior to such action. 

" ' Yours, 

*' ' Horace Greeley.' 



470 DURING T3HE WAR. 

"Mr. Jewett, in pursuance of the above, did his best, whatever 
that may be, to discover, through their friends in the loyal States 
and in the Federal District, what the Rebels would do toward 
peace ; but to no purpose. No word of concihation or arbitration 
could be evoked from that side. They wanted peace of course ; but 
peace by surrender on our side, by disunion, by the giving up to 
them not only of all they have, but of all they want, including a 
great deal that they have not and some that they never had. In 
other words, having appealed from the ballot-box and the rostrum 
to the bayonet and the sword, they purposed to end the struggle 
as they had begun it, bidding the hardest fend off and the weaker 
go to the wall. And we, after weeks of earnest pursuit of some 
endurable peace proposition from the Rebels, were obhged to give 
it up, without having come in sight of any Rebel proposition at all. 
And we are thus justified in our conviction that there never was 
any concihatory project, authorized by the Rebel chiefs, that they 
chose to submit to the judgment even of the most ardent champions 
of peace in the loyal States." 

In July, 1864, Mr. Jewett renewed his endeavors, which induced 
Mr. Greeley to address the following letter to the President : — 

HORACE GREELEY TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 

" New York, July 7, 1864. 

" My Dear Sir : — I venture to enclose you a letter and tele- 
graphic despatch that I received yesterday from our irrepressible 
friend, Colorado Jewett, at Niagara Falls. I think they deserve 
attention. Of course, I do not indorse Jewett's positive averment 
that his friends at the Falls have ' full powers ' from J. D. [Jefferson 
Davis], though I do not doubt that he thinks they have. I let that 
statement stand as simply evidencing the anxiety of the Confed- 
erates everywhere for peace. So much is beyond doubt. 

"And, therefore, I venture to remind you that our bleeding, 
bankrupt, almost dying country also longs for peace, — shudders at 
the prospect of fresh conecriptions, of further wholesale devasta- 
tions, and of new rivers of human blood; and a wide-spread con- 
viction that the government and its prominent supporters are not 
anxious for peace, and do not improve profiered opportunities to 
achieve it, is doing great harm now, and is morally certain, unless 
removed, to do far greater in the approaching elections. 



CORRESPONDENCE WITH PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 471 

" It is not enough that we anxiously desire a true and lasting 
peace; we ought to demonstrate and establish the truth beyond 
cavil. The fact that A. H. Stephens was not permitted a year ago 
to visit and confer with the authorities at Washington has done 
harm, which the tone of the late National Convention at Baltimore 
is not calculated to counteract. 

" I entreat you, in your own time and manner, to submit over- 
tures for pacification to the Southern insurgents, which the impar- 
tial must pronounce frank and generous. If only with a view to 
the momentous election soon to occur in North Carolina, and of the 
draft to be enforced in the Free States, this should be done at once. 
I would give the safe-conduct required by the Rebel envoys at 
Niagara, upon their parole to avoid observation, and to refrain from 
all communication with their sympathizers. im. the loyal States; but 
you may see reasons for declining it. But whether through them 
or otherwise, do not, I entreat you, fail to make the Southern peo- 
ple comprehend that you, and all of us, are anxious for peace, and 
prepared to grant liberal terms. I venture to suggest the following 

"plan of adjustment. 

" 1. The Union is restored and declared perpetual. 

" 2. Slavery is utterly and forever abolished throughout the same. 

" 3. A complete amnesty for all political offences, with a resto- 
ration of all the inhabitants of each State to all the privileges of cit- 
izens of the United States. 

"4. The Union to pay four hundred million dollars ($400,000,- 
000), in five-per-cent United States stock, to the late Slave States, 
loyal and secession alike, to be apportioned pro rata, according to 
their slave population respectively, by the census of 1860, in com- 
pensation for the losses of their loyal citizens by the abolition of 
slavery. Each State to be entitled to its quota upon the ratifica- 
tion by its legislature of this adjustment. The bonds to be at the 
absolute disposal of the legislature aforesaid. 

"5. The said Slave States to be entitled henceforth to represen- 
tation in the House on the basis of their total, instead of their Fed- 
eral population, the whole now being free. 

" 6. A national convention to be assembled so soon as may be, 
to ratify this adjustment, and make such changes in the Constitu- 
tion as may be deemed advisable. 



472 DURING t6e war. 

" Mr. President, I fear you do not realize how intently the people 
desire any peace consistent with the national integrity and honor, 
and how joyously they would hail its achievement, and bless its 
authors. With United States stocks worth but forty cents in gold 
per dollar, and drafting about to commence on the third milUon of 
Union soldiers, can this be wondered at ? 

" I do not say that a just peace is now attainable, though I be- 
lieve it to be so. But I do say that a frank offer by you to the 
insurgents, of terms which the impartial world say ought to be ac- 
cepted, will, at. the worst, prove an immense and sorely needed 
advantage to the national cause. It may save us from a Northern 
insurrection. 

" Yours truly, Horace Gtreelet. 

" Hon. a. Lincoln, j^lresident, Washington, D. C. 

"P. S. — Even though it should be deemed unadvisable to make 
an offer of terms to the Rebels, I insist that, in any possible case, 
it is desirable that any offer they may be disposed to make should 
be received, and either accepted or rejected. I beg you to invite 
those now at Niagara to exhibit their credentials and submit their 
ultimatum, H. Gr." 

Upon the receipt of this letter the President requested Mr. Gree- 
ley to repair to Niagara Falls, and converse with the supposed Con- 
federate commissioners. He most reluctantly complied with this 
request, and at Niagara the following correspondence occurred. 

GEORGE N. SANDERS TO HORACE GREELEY. 
" [Private and confidential.] 

"Clifton House, Niagara Falls, 
Canada West, July 12, 1864. 
' Dear Sir : — I am authorized to say that the Honorable Clement C. Clay 
of Alabama, Professor James P. Holcombe of Virginia, and George N. Sanders 
of Dixie, are ready and willing to go at once to Washington, upon complete 
and Unqualified protection being given either by the President or Secretary 
of War. Let the permission include the three names and one other. 
" Very respectfully, 

" George N. Sanders." 

HORACE GREELEY TO MESSRS. CLEMENT C. CLAY, AND OTHERS. 

" Niagara Falls. N. Y., July 17, 1864. 
"G-entlemen: — I am informed that you are duly accredited from 
Richmond, as the bearers of propositions looking to the establish- 



PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 473 

ment of peace ; that you desire to visit Washington in the fulfil- 
ment of your mission, and that you further desire that Mr. George 
N. Sanders shall accompany you. If my information be thus far 
substantially correct, I am authorized by the President of the 
United States to tender you his safe-conduct on the journey pro- 
posed, and to accompany you at the earliest time that will be 
agreeable to you. 

" I have the honor to be, gentlemen, yours, 

"Horace Greeley. 
"To Messrs. Clement C. Clay, Jacob Thompson, James P. Hol- 
COMBE, Chfton House, C. W." 

MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE TO HORACE GREELEY. 
*' Clifton House, Niagara Falls, July 18, 1864. 

" Sir: — We have the honor to acknowledge your favor of the 17th instant, 
which would have been answered on yesterday, but for the absence of Mr. 
Clay. The safe-conduct of the President of the United States has been ten- 
dered us, we regret to state, under some misapprehension of facts. We have 
not been accredited to him from Richmond as the bearers of propositions look- 
ing to the establishment of peace. 

" We are, however, in the confidential employment of our government, and 
are entirely familiar with its wishes and opinions on that subject; and we 
feel authorized to declare that, if the circumstances disclosed in this corre- 
spondence were communicated to Richmond, we would be at once invested 
with the authority to which your letter refers, or other gentlemen clothed with 
full powers would be immediately sent to Washington, with the view of has- 
tening a consummation so much to be desired, and terminating at the earliest 
possible moment the calamities of the war. 

" We respectfully solicit, through your intervention, a safe-conduct to Wash- 
ington, and thence by any route which may be designated, through your lines 
to Richmond. We would be gratified if Mr. George N. Sanders was embraced 
in this privilege. Permit us, in conclusion, to acknowledge our obligations to 
you for the interest you have manifested in the furtherance of our wishes, and 
to express the hope that, in any event, you will afford us th** opportunity of 
tendering them in person before you leave the Falls. 

" We remain, very respectfully, &c., 

" C. 0. Clay, Jr. 

J. P. HOLCOMBE. 

"P. S. — It 19 proper to add that Mr. Thompson is not here, and has not 
been staying with us since our sojourn in Canada." 



474 DURIN<t THE WAR. 

HORACE GREELEY TO MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE. 
•' International Hotel, Nlvgara, N. Y., July 18, 1864. 
"Gtentlemen: — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of 
yours of this date, by the hand of Mr. W. C. Jewett. The state of 
facts therein presented being materially different from that which 
was understood to exist by the President, when he intrusted me 
with the safe-conduct required, it seems to me on every account 
advisable that I should communicate with him by telegraph, and 
solicit fresh instructions, which I shall at once proceed to do. 

" I hope to be able to transmit the result this afternoon, and, at 
all events, I shall do so at the earUest moment. 
"Yours truly, 

"Horace Greeley. 

"To Messrs. Clement 0. Clay and James P. Holcombe, Clifton 
House, C. W." 

MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE TO HORACE GREELEY. 
" Clifton House, Niagara Falls, July 18, 1864. 
"To the Honorable H. Greeley, Niagara Falls, N. Y.: — 

" Sir : — We have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of this 
date, by the hands of Colonel Jewett, and will await the further answer which 
you purpose to send to us. 

" We are, very respectfully, &c., 

" C. C. Clay, Jr. 
James P. Holcombe." 

HORACE GREELEY TO MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE. 
" International Hotel, Niagara Falls, N. Y., July 19, 1864. 
"G-entlemen: — At a late hour last evening (too late for com- 
munication with you) I received a despatch informing me that 
further instructions left Washington last evening, which must 
reach me, if there be no interruption, at noon to-morrow. Should 
you decide to await their arrival, I feel confident that they will 
enable me to answer definitely your note of yesterday morning. 
Regretting a delay, which I am sure you will regard as unavoid- 
able on my part, 

" I remain, yours truly, 

"Horace Greeley. 

"To the Honorable Messrs. C. C. Clay, Jr., and J. P. Holcombe, 
Clifton House, Niagara, C. W." 



PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 475 

MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE TO HORACE GREELEY. 
" Clifton House, Niagara Falls, July 19, 1864. 
" Sir: — Colonel Jewett has just handed us your note of this date, in which 
you state that further instructions from Washington will reach you by noon 
to-morrow, if there be no interruption. One, or possibly both of us, may be 
obliged to leave the Falls to-day, but will return in time to receive the com- 
munication which you promise to-mon-ow. 

" We remain truly yours, &c., 

*' James P. Holcombe. 
C. C. Clay, Jr. 
" To the Honorable Horace Greeley, now at the International Hotel." 

MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE TO M. C. JEWETT. 

" Clifton House, Niagara Falls, 
Wednesday, July 20, 1864. 
" Colonel M. C. Jewett, Cataract House, Niagara Falls : — 

" Sir : — We are in receipt of your note, admonishing us of the departure of 
the Honorable Horace Greeley from the Falls ; that he regrets the sad termi' 
nation of the initiatory steps taken for peace, in consequence of the change 
made by the President in his instinictions to convey commissioners to Wash- 
ington, for negotiations, unconditionally, and that Mr. Greeley Avill be pleased 
to receive any answer we may have to make through you. 

" We avail ourselves of this offer to enclose a letter to Mr. Greeley, which 
you will oblige us by delivering. We cannot take leave of you without ex- 
pressing our thanks for your courtesy and kind offices as the intermediary 
through whom our correspondence with Mr. Greeley has been conducted, and 
assuring you that we are, very respectfully, 

" Your obedient servants, 

" C. C. Clay, Jr". 
James P. Holcombe," 

MESSRS. CLAY AND HOLCOMBE TO HORACE GREELEY. 
" Niagara Falls, Clifton House, July 21, 1864. 
To the Honorable Horace Greeley : — 

" Sir : — The paper handed to Mr. Holcombe on yesterday, in your presence, 
by Major Hay, A. A. G., as an answer to the application in our note of the 
18th instant, is couched in the following terms: — 

'"Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C, July 18, 1864. 
" ' To whom it may concern : — 

" ' Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity 
of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by 
and with an authority that can conti'ol the armies now at war against the 
United States, will be received and considered by the Executive Government 
of the United States, and will be met by liberal terms, on other substantial 
and collateral points, and the beairer or bearers thereof shall have safe-conduct 
both ways. 

'"Abraham Lincoln.* 



476 DURING^THE WAR. 

" The application to which we refer was elicited by your letter of the 17th 
instant, in which you inform Mr. Jacob Thompson and ourselves that you 
were authorized by the President of the United States to tender us his safe- 
conduct, on the hypothesis that we were ' duly accredited from Richmond as 
bearers of propositions looking to the establishment of peace,' and desired a 
visit to Washington in the fulfilment of this mission. This assertion, to which 
we then gave and still do, entire credence, was accepted by us as the evidence 
of an unexpected but most gratifying change in the policy of the President, — 
a change which we felt authorized to hope might terminate in the conclusion 
of a peace mutually just, honorable, and advantageous to the North and to the 
South, exacting no condition but that we should be ' duly accredited from Rich- 
mond as bearers of propositions looking to the establishment of peace.' Thus 
proffering a basis for conference as comprehensive as we could desire, it seemed 
to us that the President opened a door which had previously been closed against 
the Confederate States for a full interchange of sentiments, free discussion of 
conflicting opinions, and untrammelled effort to remove all causes of contro- 
versy by liberal negotiations. We, indeed, could not claim the benefit of a safe- 
conduct which had beer^extended to us in a character we had no right to assume, 
and had never affected to possess ; but the uniform declarations of our Execu- 
tive and Congress, and then thrice-repeated and as often repulsed attempts to 
open negotiations, furnish a sufficient pledge to us that this conciliatory mani- 
festation on the part of the President of the United States would be met by 
them in a temper of equal magnanimity. We had. therefore, no hesitation in 
declaring that if this correspondence was communicated to the President of 
the Confederate States, he would promptly embrace the opportunity presented 
for seeking a peaceful solution of this unhappy strife. We feel confident that 
you must share our profound regret that the spirit which dictated the first step 
toward peace had not continued to animate the councils of your President. 
Had the representatives of the two governments met to consider this question, 
the most momentous ever submitted to human statesmanship, in a temper of 
becoming moderation and equity, followed, as their deliberations would have 
been, by the prayers and benedictions of every patriot and Christian on the 
habitable globe, who is there so bold as to pronounce that the frightful waste 
of individual happiness and public prosperity which is daily saddening the 
universal heart might not have been terminated, or if the desolation and car- 
nage of war must still be endured tlu-ough weary years of blood and suffering, 
that there might not at least have been infused into its conduct something 
more of the spirit which softens and partially redeems its brutalities ? 

" Instead of the safe-conduct which we solicited, and which your first letter 
gave us every reason to suppose would be extended for the purpose of initiat- 
ing a negotiation, in which neither government would compromise its rights 
or its dignity, a document has been presented which provokes as much indig- 
nation as surprise. It bears no feature of resemblance to that which was origi- 
nally offered, and is unlike any paper which ever before emanated from the 
constitutional executive of a free people. Addressed ' to whom it may con- 
cern,' it precludes negotiations, and prescribes in advance the terms and con- 



PEACE NEGOTIATIONS. 477 

ditions of peace. It rehiras to the original policy of ' no bargaining, no negotia- 
tions, no truces with Rebels except to bury their dead, until every man shall 
have laid down his arms, submitted to the government, and sued for mercy.' 

" Whatever may be the explanation of this sudden and entire change in the 
views of the President, of this rude withdrawal of a courteous overture for 
negotiation at the moment it was likely to be accepted, of this emphatic recall 
of words of peace just uttered, and fresh blasts of war to the bitter end, we 
leave for the speculation of those who have the means or inclination to pene- 
trate the mysteries of his cabinet, or fathom the caprice of his imperial wiU. 
It is enough for us to say that we have no use whatever for the paper Avhich 
has been placed in our hands. 

" We could not transmit it to the President of the Confederate States with- 
out offering him an indignity, dishonoring ourselves, and incurring the well- 
merited scorn of our countrymen. While an ardent desire for peace pervades 
the people of the Confederate States, we rejoice to believe that there are few, 
if any, among them who would purchase it at the expense of liberty, honor, 
and self-respect. If it can be secured only by their submission to terms of 
conquest, the generation is yet unborn which will witness its restitution. 

" If there be any military autocrat in the North who is entitled to proffer 
the conditions of this manifesto, there is none in the South authorized to en- 
tertain them. Those who control our armies are the servants of the people, — 
not their masters; and they have no more inclination, than they have the 
right, to subvert the social institutions of the sovereign States, to overthrow 
their established constitutions, and to barter away their priceless heritage of 
self-government. This correspondence will not, however, we trust, prove 
wholly barren of good result. 

" If there is any citizen of the Confederate States who has clung to a hope 
that peace was possible with this administration of the Federal government, 
it will strip from his eyes the last film of such delusion ; or if there be any 
whose hearts have grown faint under the suffering and agony of this bloody 
struggle, it will inspire them with fresh energy to endure and brave whatever 
may yet be requisite to preserve to themselves and their children all that gives 
dignity and value to life or hope and consolation to death. And if there be 
any patriots or Christians in your land, who shrink appalled from the illimi- 
table vista of private miserj^ and public calamity which stretches before them, 
we pray that in their bosoms a resolution may be quickened to recall the 
abused authority, and vindicate the outraged civilization of their country. 
For the solicitude you have manifested to inaugurate a movement which con- 
templates results the most noble and humane we retui-n our sincere thanks, 
and are most respectfully and truly your obedient servants, 

" C. C. Clay, Jr. 
James P. Holcombe." 

Mr. G-reelej returned to New York little pleased with the results 
of his mission, nor satisfied with the course of the administration. 
He experienced the truth of Dr. Frankhn's remark, that, however 



478 DURING. THE WAR. 

" blessed " peacemakers may be in another world, they are usually 
rewarded with curses in this. Events have since shown that there 
was never a moment during the war when the Confederate gov- 
ernment would have entertained a proposition for peace on any 
other basis than that of separation. 

THE TRIBUNE OFFICE ATTACKED DURING THE DRAFT RIOTS OF 1863. 

At the beginning of the war there was a slight disturbance in 
Nassau Street, opposite the Herald office, in consequence of the 
doubtful position of the Herald with regard to the opening con- 
test. Upon the exhibition of the United States flag from one of 
the windows of the Herald building, the people assembled cheered 
the flag, and soon after dispersed. This event was reported in the 
Tribune, in such a manner as to suggest the inference that the 
Herald cared not which flag floated above its office, that of the 
Union, or that of the Rebellion, and that nothing but the threats of 
a mob determined its choice. The editor of the Herald took deep 
offence at this report, and seemed to be resolved to wreak upon his 
neighbor a bloody vengeance. Almost every day, for the next 
two years, an article or a paragraph appeared in the Herald, hold- 
ing up the Tribune and its editor to popular execration, denouncing 
them as the authors of the war, and intimating that the time would 
come when the people would see this, and hang the editor upon a 
lamp-post. Probably two hundred articles hke the following could 
be collected from the columns of the Herald, during the first two 
years of the war : — 

" This crazy, contemptible wretch, who now asserts the equality of white 
men and negroes, formerly asserted, with quite as much persistency and fer- 
vor, that all men should have property in common ; that all persons should 
live in common ; that all women should be common prostitutes. These dam- 
nable doctrines, under the names of Fourrieriteism, phalanxism, and free-love- 
ism, Greeley openly professed and daily advocated in his Tribune. Ofle by 
one these abominable bantlings of his have been strangled, and now abolition- 
ism — which is a part of the same accursed brood — only remains. With the 
others, he sought to break up all society and to abolish the institution of the 
family. With this last he has at'-'-^pted to break up the Union, and to put 
white men and black upon an equality in everything. With the other isms 
he did much harm, and debauched many innocent people. With this last, he 
has involved us in a civil war, and sacrificed thousands of valuable lives. Un- 
doubtedly Greeley's abolitionism wiU finally be put down, as his other isms 
have been ; but at what a tenlble cost of blood and treasure will this be ac- 



ASSAULT UPON THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 479 

complished! When the white and black races are once airayed against each 
other, one of them will be exterminated. To that point, Greeley and his tool, 
the black parson Gamett, are fast hastening matters. They are the enemies 
of both the white and black races alike ; their efforts injure the negroes as 
much as they injure the white people. Sensible persons of both races hate 
and despise them." 

The following may serve as a specimen of the more elaborate 
efforts of the Herald to excite odium against the editor of the 
Tribune : — 

" Deliberately, and with malice prepense, ' that horrible monster Greeley,* 
as he is called upon the floor of Congress, has instigated this dreadful civil 
war for years past, and carefully nurtured and fostered the abolition senti- 
ment, with which he hoped to poison and kill the Republic. Most persons 
suppose that a desire for gain has rendered him insane, and that visions of 
rich plantations, confiscated from slaveholders and bestowed upon him, have 
tempted him on in his ruinous path. Others regard him as one possessed of a 
devil. Others still are of opinion that he is in his senses, and is only a bad mau 
made worse by cupidity and disappointment. We do not pretend to decide 
which of these theories be correct ; but it is certain that until recently he has 
made but very little money by his wickedness. Like the magician's gold, all 
of his ill-gotten gains brought him ruin. He acknowledged in his Tribune that 
he had lost money by the publication of his paper last year, and he wrote 
penny-a-line articles for weekly papers in order to make a living. The publi- 
cation was continued, therefore, only that the paper might be used to secure 
offices and contracts. It has now no circulation and less advertising, and 
lives only by illegitimate aid. Its fruit is blood and spoils. Sam Wilkeson of 
the Tribune acknowledged that he had kept a Tribune contract bureau at 
Washington. The official correspondence of Secretary of War Cameron shows 
that the Tribune Association has gun contracts. In the following tables we 
have collected some of the items of expenditure in treasure and blood for 
which the country is indebted to the Tribune : — 

" GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES IN ACCOUNT WITH NEW YORK 

TRIBUNE. Dr. 

To a civil war, fomented by Tribune abolitionists, costing the country 
in crisis, ruined commerce, suspended manufiictvires, army expenses, 
losses in trade, &c., about $2,000,000,000.00 

To the loss of Fort Siunter, and the failure of the expedition for the re- 
lief, caused by the revelations of Harvey, the Tribune's Washing- 
ton correspondent 2,000,000.00 

To losses at the battle of Bull Run, caused by the Tribune's 'Onward 
to Richmond' articles, amounting, according to Thurlow Weed, 
to about 100,000,000.00 

To delays, extra expenses, &c., caused by the Tribune's assaults upon 

General McClellan, say 200,000,000.00 



480 DTJRIN© THE WAR. 

To the abolition campaign of Fremont in Missouri, including mule, 

blanket, and musket contracts $50,000,000.00 

To Banks's disaster, caused by the Tribune abolitionists and their in- 
trigues against McClellan 10,000,000.00 

To various emancipation schemes, darkey schools, nigger conservatories 
at Beaufort, and General Hunter's squashed proclamation, includ- 
ing expenditures for red trousers, and Tribune muskets . . . 5,000,000.00 
To daily attacks upon the administration and the army, encouraging 

the Rebels and weakening the Union cause, say ... . 100,000,000.00 
To a contract for 25,000 muskets, obtained by the Tribune Gun Associ- 
ation, and sub-let to outside parties 625,000.00 

To a second contract for 40,000 muskets, sub-let as above . . . 500,000.00 
To Greeley's pay, franking, pickings, books, and mjleage, while in 

Congress 5,000.00 

To salary of Harvey, of the Tribune, Minister to Portugal, four years 30,000.00 
To salary of Pike, of the Tribune, Minister to the Netherlands, four 

years 30,000.00 

To salary of Hildreth, of the Tribune, Consul at Trieste, four years 3,000.00 

To salary of Fry, of the Tribune, Secretary of Legation at Sardinia . 7,200.00 
To salary of Bayard Taylor, of the Tribune, Secretary of Legation at 

St. Petersburg • . 7,200.00 

To profit on various jobs and contracts of Camp, stockholder of the 

Tribune 500,000.00 

To profit of Ahny, of the Tribune, on gun contracts . . . . 250,000.00 

To profit of Snow, of the Tribune, on gun contracts .... 100,000.00 

To profit of Hall, stockholder of the Tribune, on army shoes . . 50,000.00 
To profit of Dr. Ayer, stockholder of the Tribune, on Cherry Pectoral 

for the army 50,000.00 

To profit of Wilkeson, of the Tribune, on the 'Tribune's Contract Bu- 
reau' at Washington • -05 

Total, $2,469,162,400.05 

*' So much for the spoils ; and now for the blood. The following list, it will 
be observed, does not include the captured, the missing, or the sick Union sol- 
diers, — losses equally chargeable to the Tribune and the Abolitionists : — 

Killed. Wounded. 

"ToBuURun 481 1,011 

To Davis Creek, Mo 223 721 

To Lexington, Mo 89 120 

To Ball's Bluff 223 266 

ToBehnont 84 288 

To Mill Spring, Ky 39 207 

To Fort Henry 17 31 

To Roanoke Island 60 222 

To Fort Donelson 446 1,735 

To Fort Craig, New Mexico 62 140 

To Pea Ridge 203 972 

To Attack of the Merrimac 201 108 

ToNewbern 91 466 

To Winchester 132 540 



ASSAULT ON THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 481 

To Pittsburg Landing 1,735 7,882 

ToTorktown 35 120 

To Forts Jackson and St. Philip 30 119 

To Williamsburg 455 1,411 

To West Point 44 100 

To McDowell 87 225 

To near Corinth 21 149 

To Banks's retreat, estimated 100 800 

To Hanover Ccurt-House 63 296 

To Fair Oaks 890 3,627 

To Port Republic (Fremont) 131 456 

To Port Republic (Shields) ...... 67 370 

To seven days' contests, estimated 4,000 11,000 

To skirmishes 690 1,740 

Total 10,889 85,822 

" We bring the account current of the Tribune up to date. What greater 
disasters it may bring upon us in the future, if not soon suppressed, time alone 
can tell. By its opposition to McClellan it has indefinitely prolonged the war, 
added immensely to our expenses in men and money, and made European inter- 
vention probable. Its motive for this is self-evident, — it is self-interest. Poor 
Greeley makes money out of the war. He has conti-acts which cease when the 
war ceases, and therefore he is determined that the war shall continue. Mad 
with greed, he nishes onward to his ruin. In vain his army correspondent 
' S. W.' assures him that he and his associates are ' doomed men.' He wU] 
not cease to do evil until the government or the people shall lose all patience, 
and suddenly annihilate him and his infamous Tribune. That time now seems 
not very distant. He will be fairly tried, and if found insane, he will be sent 
to an asylum ; if sane, to the gallows. This monster, ogre, ghoul, will soon 
feast his last upon Union blood and national spoils." 

In many articles the mob was incited to make Mr. GTreeley the 
first victim of their vengeance. "If," said the Herald, "we decide 
to hang the AboHtionists, poor G-reeley shall swing on the post of 
honor at the head or tail of the lot. We promise him that high 
honor." 

These efforts were at length crowned with some degree of suc- 
cess. The Tribune office was assailed by a mob during the draft 
riots of July, 1863, and its editor would certainly have been put to 
death but for the precautionary measures of his friends. It fell to 
my lot to witness the attempt to destroy the Tribune building. 
On Monday, the first day of the disturbance, about four o'clock in 
the afternoon, my wife and I were strolling down Fourteenth 
Street in that languid state of mind which writers know who have 
spent a long morning at the desk. Near the corner of the Fifth 
31 



482 DURING %HE WAR. 

Avenue we were startled from our state of vacancy by a large 
stone falling upon the pavement before us, which was followed by 
a yell of many voices, and the swift galloping past of a horse with 
a black man on his back. We saw streaming down the Fifth Ave- 
nue a crowd of ill-dressed and ill-favored men and boys, each car- 
rying a long stick or piece of board, and one or two of them a 
rusty musket. They were walking rapidly and without order, on 
the sidewalk and in the street, and extended perhaps a quarter of 
a mile; in all, there may have been two hundred of them. The 
stone which had recalled our attention to sublunary things was 
aimed by one of these scoundrels at the negro, who owed his es- 
cape from instant death to his being on horseback. 

Having heard nothing of the riots of that morning, we Avere puz- 
zled to account for the presence of this motley crew in a region 
usually so serene, until one of them cried out, as he passed, " There 
*s a three-hundred-dollar fellow." When the main body had gone 
by, I asked one of the stragglers where they were going. The 
reply was, " To the ' Trybune ' office." 

It was a strange looking gang of ruffians. I have lived in New 
York from childhood, and supposed myself to be pretty well ac- 
quainted with the various classes of its inhabitants. But I did not 
recognize that crowd. I know not to this day whence they came 
nor whither they vanished. Three fourths of them were under 
twenty-one years of age, and many were not more than fourteen. 
The clubs with which they were armed were all extempore, evi- 
dently seized, as they passed, from some pile of old boards and 
timber. Their clothes were not of any kind of shabbiness that I 
have ever seen in our streets. They were not the garments of 
laborers or mechanics, nor of any other class usually seen here. I 
should say they might be dock thieves, plunderers of ship-yards, 
and stealers of old iron and copper. 

It occurred to me that, by taking an omnibus, I could get ahead 
of the gang, and give warning at the office threatened, — about a 
mile and a half distant. So we hurried to Broadway ; but the om- 
nibuses being full, I strode on at a great pace down town, and thus 
had the exquisite satisfaction of seeing that crew of villains put to 
flight near the corner of Tenth Street. It so happened that, just 
as the head of the gang turned into Broadway, a body of policemen 
was passing on toward the scene of the riots up town. The police 



ASSAULT ON THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 483 

instantly formed into two lines, extending from curbstone to curb- 
stone, and rushed upon the mob. " Strike hard and take no pris- 
oners," was the word. There was a rattling of clubs for a moment, 
a dozen knock-down blows given, an "I the ruffians fled by every 
street, leaving their wounded in the mud. The police re-formed in 
marching order, and continued their course, making no arrests. It 
was all over in about a minute. All the wounded were able to get 
away, except one, who staggered into a drug-store as I got into an 
omnibus. He was evidently in a damaged condition about the 
head, and his face was covered with blood. Only one of the police 
was hit, and he was able to go on with his company. 

At the Tribune office everything wore an aspect so little unusual 
^that I felt rather ashamed to tell my story. The windows and 
doors were all open, the business office was nearly empty, the ed- 
itorial rooms quite so, and there was no crowd around the build- 
ing. The reporters and editors were absent, collecting details of 
the riot. 

While I was suggesting the propriety of shutting up the office, 
as a precautionary measure, Mr. G-ilmore (Edmund Kirke) came 
in, and to him I stated what I had seen and heard. He was 
fully alive to the situation, and proposed that we should go to 
the Chief of Police and to General Wool, and see what was pre- 
pared for the protection of the office during the night. We went. 
At police head-quarters, we found a squad of more than a hundred 
men drawn up on the sidewalk, who, we were assured, would 
march to the office and remain on guard there. This seemed suf- 
ficient; but, to make assurance doubly sure, Mr, Grilmore insisted 
on our going to G-eneral Wool. We found the General at the St. 
Nicholas Hotel, with the Mayor and a staffi Mr. Gilmore pro- 
cured from him an order on the ordnance officer at Governor's Isl- 
and for one hundred muskets, and the requisite ammunition. He 
started immediately for the island ; and I, satisfied that the Trib- 
une was safe, walked leisurely to the office to report progress. 

It was about seven in the evening when I reached- it. The ap- 
pearance of the neighborhood had changed. The office was closed, 
and the shutters were up. A large number of people were in the 
open space in front of it, talking in groups, but not in a loud or ex- 
cited manner. Not a policeman was to be seen. Upon getting into 
the office, I found only two or three persons there, neither of whom 



484 DURING THE WAR. 

knew anything about the body of pohce detailed to guard the prem- 
ises, nor had they heard of any measures taken to defend it. Their 
official position made it their duty to stand by the ship ; and there 
they were, helpless and alone. Crossing over to the police station 
in the City Hall, in search of the promised squad, I found one po- 
liceman in charge, who said that a hundred and ten men had, in- 
deed, come down to that station ; but that, upon a rumor of a riot 
in the First Ward, they had immediately marched away again. 
As Mr. Gilmore could not possibly get back with the arms under 
two hours, the office was no safer than before. 

I went among the crowd in front of the Tribune office, to learn 
the tone of the conversation going on there. There was nothing 
remarkable in the appearance of the people, most of whom seemed 
to be merely attracted by curiosity, and detained by the impulse 
there is at such times for people to gather in knots and talk. 0:ie 
good-natured looking bull of a man was declaiming a little. " What 
is the use of killing the niggers? " said he. '' The niggers have n't 
done nothing. They did n't bring themselves here, did they ? 
They are peaceable enough! They don't interfere with nobody," 
Then pointing to the editorial rooms of the Tribune, he exclaimed, 
" Them are the niggers up there." Others were holding forth in 
a similar strain. 

Little by little the crowd gathered more closely about the office, 
and became more compact. The sidewalk was kept pretty clear; 
but from the curbstone back to the middle of the square there was 
a mass of people who stood looking at the building, which loomed 
up in the dusk of the evening, unlighted and apparently unoccu- 
pied. The crowd was still very quiet. At length a small gang of 
such fellows as I had seen demolished by the police in the after- 
noon came along from Chatham Street and mingled with the 
crowd, which from that time began to be a little noisy. A voice 
would utter something, and the rest of the people would laugh or 
cheer, or both. It was the laughter and cheers which appeared to 
work the mob up to the point of committing violence. G-radually 
the shouts became louder and much more frequent. At last a 
stone was thrown, which hit one of the shutters and fell upon the 
pavement close to the building. Tliis was greeted by a perfect yell 
of applause ; and then, for the first time, I felt that the office was 
in danger. Before that, the crowd had laughed too much to sug- 



ASSAULT ON THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 485 

gest the fear that it meant mischief. Besides, the fringe of the 
crowd nearest the building was composed of boys, — newsboys, 
apparently, — some of whom were not more than twelve years old. 

I ran over to the police station at the City Hall. A few police- 
men were there, to whom I said : — 

"The mob are beginning to throw stones at the Tribune office. 
Five men can stop the mischief now ; in ten minutes a hundred 
cannot," 

It happened that the number of men present was six, five of 
whom very prontptly drew their clubs, and repaired to the scene. 
By the time they arrived stones were flying fast, and little boys 
would run forward, under the shower of missiles, pick up a stone 
or two, and run back. Occasionally a window would be broken, 
eliciting a yell of triumph from the mob. The five men went 
boldly along the sidewalk, and gained a position between the office 
and the crowd. The firing totally ceased for a minute or two, and 
the mob slunk away from the police, as if fearing, possibly, revolv- 
ers. Very soon, however, the smallness of the force became appar- 
ent; no revolvers were shown; and the stones again began to bat- 
ter against the shutters and smash the windows. The mob surged 
forward ; those in front being pushed upon the clubs of the police- 
men, who were soon overpowered and thrust aside. Then the mob 
rushed at the lower shutters and doors. There was a loud banging 
and thumping of clubs, and, in an exceedingly short time, amid the 
most frantic yells of the multitude, the main door was forced, and 
the mob poured into the building. I supposed then that the Trib- 
une was gone. But at that moment the report of a pistol was 
heard, fired somewhere in front of the building, whether from one 
of the windows or from a policeman below, I know not. Instantly 
most of the assailants took to flight, and Printing-House Square 
appeared as empty as it usually is at two o'clock in the morning. 
It was like magic. The gates of the opposite Park were choked 
with fugitives. Before the dastards had time to rally a whole 
army of blue uniforms came up Nassau Street, at the double-quick, 
and the ofl&ce was saved. These men, I suppose, were the original 
one hundred and ten detailed for the purpose ; but, in the dim light 
of the evening, it seemed as if Nassau Street was a rushing torrent 
of dark-blue cloth, flecked with the foam of human faces. 

Mr. Greeley was slow to believe that anything serious was in- 



486 DURING THE WAR. 

tended by those who opposed the draft. One of his associates said 
to him that morning : " We must arm the of&ce. This is not a riot ; 
it is a revolution," 

"No," repHed the editor; "do not bring a musket into the build- 
ing. Let them strike the first blow. All my hfe I have worked 
for the workingmen ; if they would now burn my office and hang 
me, why, let them do it." 

Mr. Gilmore may continue the story of the assault upon the of- 
fice: "While these events were going on, the senior editor of the 
Tribune was quietly reading the evening newspaper at his up-town 
lodgings, in happy ignorance of the drama that was being enacted 
in Printing-House Square. His dinner had been a somewhat 
lengthy one, owing to the fact that his friends, to keep him away 
from his office as long as possible, had shrewdly ordered viands 
that consumed a long time in cooking. But they were done at 
last; and the repast over, this man, who was marked out for the 
especial fury of the populace, rose to go openly back to his office, 
and write another editorial. He was in Ann Street ; and all Nas- 
sau Street, and Printing-House Square, and Broadway around the 
corner, was filled with an excited crowd clamoring, 'Down with 
the Tribune ! ' ' Down with the old white coat what counts a nayger 
as good as an Irishman ! ' He could not have gone ten paces without 
recognition ; and recognition by that mob meant death in ten min- 
utes fi:om the nearest lamp-post. In these circumstances, it was 
fortunate that he was attended by a friend (Theodore Tilton) who 
was fully alive to the danger. For a time the Tribune editor in- 
sisted that he would not be kept from his office by a crew of riot- 
ers, but at last he was persuaded that ' discretion is the better part 
of valor,' and consented to be driven homeward, A carriage was 
brought, the curtains were drawn down, and entering with his 
two friends he was hurried through the very midst of the mob to 
his home on one of the up-town avenues. He had escaped immi- 
nent peril; and safely arrived there, might have drawn a lono 
breath ; but it is more than likely that he did not, for all through 
the riots he seemed totally oblivious to the fact that he was in anj 
personal danger," 

In the course of the evening Mr, Grilmore returned with a» 
abundant supply of arms and ammunition, and the office was thor- 
oughly fortified. Mr. Grilmore adds the following particulars: — 



ASSAULT ON THE TRIBUNE OFFICE. 48< 

" As he went down Broadway, the managing editor heard that 
the Tribune building had been sacked and burned ; but he kept on, 
and in half an hour reached the office, just as the pohce were driv- 
ing off the rear-guard of the rioters. Entering the lower story, he 
came upon a scene which beggared description. In the two min- 
utes they had held possession the mob had accomplished the most 
thorough and complete destruction. Not an article of furniture re- 
mained in its proper position. G-as-burners were twisted oflf, coun- 
ters torn up, desks overturned, doors and windows battered in; 
and, in the centre of the room, two charred spots, littered over 
with paper cinders, showed where fires had been kindled to reduce 
the building to ashes. 

"Ascending to the upper stories, he found the editorial rooms si- 
lent and deserted by all save one of the corps, — the brave Smalley, 
who, a year before, had ridden by the side of Hooker through the 
fire of the bloody field of Antietam. The composing-rooms, also, 
had but a single tenant, — the rest having escaped by the roof when 
the mob attacked the building. Out of a force of a hundred and 
fifty men, only three were at their posts. But, if the whole -num- 
ber had stood their ground, what could they, unarmed, have done 
against a furious mob of five thousand? 

" But the editor did not waste thought on this subject ; for it was 
already eight o'clock at night, and, before daybreak, fifty thousand 
copies of his journal had to be in press, and borne on the four winds 
to every quarter of the country. Looking down on the street, he 
saw that the mob had dispersed ; and, quietly sallying out, he ral- 
lied a dozen of his printers. With this small force he began work ; 
but soon, one by one, the others fell in, and in half an hour the 
types were clicking, and the monster press was rumbhng, as if 
only quiet reigned over the great city." 

The vengeance which Mr. Greeley took upon the editor of the 
Herald was of the kind described in Scripture as "heaping coals 
of fire upon the head." During the Presidential campaign of 1864 
Mr. Lincoln and his friends deemed the support of the Herald al- 
most essential to his success, and that support was deliberately pur- 
chased. The price paid was the profier of the mission to France. 
This bargain was made known to several editors of Republican 
newspapers, who agreed not to denounce it. Mr. Greeley was 
even prevailed upon to insert in the Tribune a paragraph, written 



.488 DURING THE WAR. 

by another hand, in which the editor of the Herald was commended 
as a proper person to represent the United States at the conrt of 
France. I have no more doubt that Mr. Greeley's motives in coun- 
tenancing this bargain were patriotic than I have that the act was 
wrong. It was not only wrong, but impolitic, since the city of 
New York, where the Herald chiefly circulates, and where alone 
it can be said to have any influence over votes, gave to the candi- 
date for the Presidency opposed to Mr. Lincoln the great majority 
of thirty-seven thousand. We must remember, however, that 
when this compact was made the prospects of the United States 
were gloomy in the extreme ; and to many men the clamorous sup- 
port of the Herald was supposed to be desirable, even though pur- 
chased by the sacrifice of honor. 

During the year 1863, when the immense expenses in which the 
war involved the Tribune consumed the profits of the establish- 
ment, Mr. Grreeley accepted a very liberal offer from Messrs. Case 
& Co. of Hartford, to write a history of the war, and, during the 
next two or three years, he performed two days' work in one. At 
nine in the morning he shut himself up in his room in the "Bible 
House" with an amanuensis, and worked upon his history until 
four in the afternoon ; after which he went down town, dined, and 
labored upon the newspaper until eleven at night. And, as if this 
were not enough, he frequently snatched an hour or two during the 
evening to address a political meeting. The history was finished 
in 1865, and has had a sale of a hundred and fifty thousand copies, 
and is still in active demand. No one knows better than Mr. Gree- 
ley that the complete and final history of the war has not yet be- 
come possible, and will not for some years to come. Nevertheless, 
it may be said of Mr. Greeley's work, that it is the most valuable 
contribution to the means of understanding the war, both in its 
causes and in its results, that has yet been made by an individual. 
The spirit of it is high, humane, and every way admirable, and it 
contains an astonishing mass of instructive details. Mr. Greeley 
says in his Preface, and truly says : "I shall labor constantly to 
guard against the error of supposing that all the heroism, devoted- 
ness, humanity, chivalry, evinced in the contest were displayed on 
one side ; all the cowardice, ferocity, cruelty, rapacity, and general 
depravity, on the other. I believe it to be the truth, and as such 
I shall endeavor to show that, while this war has been signalized 



PRIZES FOR IMPROVED FRUITS. 489 

by some deeds disgraceful to human nature, the general behavior 
of the combatants on either side has been calculated to do honor 
even to the men who, though fearfully misguided, are still our 
countrymen, and to exalt the prestige of the American name." 
The dedication of the work was as follows : — 

TO 

JOHN BRiaHT, 

BRITISH COMMONER AND CHRISTIAN STATESMAN: 

THE FRIEND OF MY COUNTRY, BECAUSE THE FRIEND OF MANKIND: 

THIS RECORD OF A NATION'S STRUGGLE 

UP 

FROM DARKNESS AND BONDAGE TO LIGHT AND LIBERTY, 

IS REGARDFULLY, GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED 

BY THE AUTHOE. 

In 1864, when the subscriptions to the forthcoming history prom- 
ised to put a little money in Mr. G-reeley's pocket, he concluded to 
spend a few hundred dollars of it in the manner indicated in the 
following article : — 

"IMPROVED VARIETIES OF FRUIT. 

" So much has been well done within the last few years in Amer- 
ican fruit-growing, that it seems feasible to do still more, or at least 
to realize more extensively and rapidly the benefit of past improve- 
ments. 

"I. Perhaps the most signal advance has been made in the pro- 
duction of GrRAPES. There are probably twenty-fold more grapes 
grown for sale in this country to-day than there were thirty years 
ago, while the improvement in current varieties, in culture and in 
quahty, has been equally decided. Still, we are growing far too 
many inferior grapes, while our established favorites are too gener- 
ally deficient in one or more respects ; they require too long a sea- 
son, or they have some notable defect as a table-fruit. So much 
labor has been wasted on varieties of foreign origin, that it is not 
deemed advisable to incite to further effort in that direction. There 
is not to-day in the United States a good table-grape of foreign 
origin that can safely be grown in open air, north of the Potomac 



490 DURING THE WAR. 

and the Ohio. But it is plausibly claimed that several substantially 
new or little known varieties of domestic origin are of high quality, 
fulfilling all the requisites of choice table-fruit. It is time that these 
claims were tested and passed upon by disinterested and capable 
judges. As a humble contribution toward this end, I hereby offer 
a premium of $ 100 for the best plate of native grapes, weighing not 
less than six pounds, of any variety known to the growers or propa- 
gators of this country. I require that the grapes competing for this 
premium shall ripen earlier than the Isabella, Catawba, or Diana, 
none of which is considered well adapted to a season no longer and 
no hotter and drier than ours. The berries must be of at least 
good medium size, and not liable to fall from the stem when ripe. 
The flesh must be melting and tender quite to the centre. The 
flavor must be pure, rich, vinous, and exhilarating. The vine must 
be healthy, productive, of good habit of growth for training in yards 
and gardens as well as in vineyards, with leaves at least as hardy 
and well adapted to our chmate as those of the Delaware. In short, 
what is sought is a vine which embodies the best qualities of the 
most approved American and foreign varieties, so far as possible. 

"I propose to pay this premium on the award of the fruit depart- 
ment of the American Institute, and invite competition for it at the 
annual fair of that Institute soon to open ; but, if a thoroughly sat- 
isfactory grape should not now be presented, the Institute will of 
course postpone the award till the proper claimant shall have ap- 
peared. 

" II. I offer a further premium of $ 100 for the best bushel of 
Apples, of a variety which combines general excellence with the 
quality of keeping in good condition at least to the 1st of February, 
and is adapted to the climate and soil of the Northern and Middle 
States. 

" It is not required that the apple submitted for competition shall 
be new ; but it is hoped that one may be found which combines 
the better characteristics of such popular favorites as the Northern 
Spy, Baldwin, Greening, and Newton Pippin, or a majority of 
them. Let us see if there be not a better apple than the estabhshed 
favorites ; if not, let us acknowledge and act upon the truth. 

"III. I further offer a premium of $100 for the best bushel of 
Pears of a specific variety, — size, flavor, season, &c., being aU con- 
sidered. It must be a pear adapted to general cultivation. It need 



PRIZES FOR IMPROVED FRUITS. 491 

not be a new sort, provided it be unquestionably superior ; but one 
object of the premium is to develop unacknowledged excellence if 
such shall be found to exist. 

"One object of these offers is to afford a landmark for fruit- 
growers in gardens and on small farms, who are now bewildered by 
the multiplicity of sorts challenging their attention, each setting up 
claims to unapproachable excellence. I leave the determination of 
all questions which may arise as to the propriety of making a 
prompt award, or awaiting further developments, entirely to the 
appropriate department of the Institute. 

"Horace Greeley. 

"New York, September 22, 1864." 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

RECONSTRUCTION. 

Horace Greeley's plan — His mediation between President Johnaon and Congress — He joins 
in bailing Jefferson Davis — His speech at Richmond. 

No reader of this work need be informed how Horace G-reeley 
felt toward the people of the Southern States when the war ended. 
Unless his nature had suddenly changed, he could have nad no 
other than a friendly feeling toward them, and an intense desire 
for the restoration of good feeling between the two sections of the 
Union. His policy of reconstruction is summed up in four words. 
a thousand times repeated in the Tribune : " Universal amnesty, 

IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE." 

To this simple but all-including plan he has constantly adhered, 
until at the present moment there is a prospect of its speedy and 
complete adoption. 

In a speech delivered in March, 1866, he expressed his views 
with clearness and force. 

"What has the war decided? First, all men agree that our 
war's close has settled this point : that we — all the States compos- 
ing this Federal Union — are not a mere confederacy ; we are not 
a league ; we are not an alliance : we are a nation. This country 
of ours, this American people, compose a nation; and your alle- 
giance and my allegiance is due, primarily, to the country, to the 
United States, and not to New York, nor New Jersey, nor Eenn- 
sylvania, nor Virginia, wherever we may happen to live, — not to 
our State, but to our country. There were differences of opinion 
about this before the war, but I believe that all men now agree that 
the point has been settled ; and, whatever may have been heretofore 
believed or taught with regard to State rights or the right of seces- 
sion, it is generally conceded now that that issue has been settled, 
and that, first and above all things, we are a nation. 

"Now, then, this conclusion carries very much more with it; for, 
if the government of the United States is entitled to your alle- 
giance and my allegiance, primarily, then we are entitled to ita 

492 



HORACE Greeley's plan. 493 

protection. It cannot be that in the one case the Union is entitled 
to our first and paramount allegiance, and, on the other hand, we 
are not entitled to that Union's paramount and complete protec- 
tion. If the State may wrest from me the protection of my coun- 
try, — if the State may stand between me and the country and say, 
* The nation decrees this ; but we will do with you as we please, 
in spite of the nation,' — then it is most unjust that the nation 
should demand from me my allegiance at the same time that it 
withholds from me its protection. I think all men say yes to this. 

" But that conclusion reaches very much further than many of 
us would be willing to follow it ; for, if what I have said is true 
with regard to white men, it is also true with regard to black men. 
If the government of the United States, before and above all else, 
is entitled to the allegiance of every great and every small man, 
every intelligent and every ignorant man, every white and every 
black man in the country, then that government, before all else, is 
bound to protect these men in their rights as free men. So, when 
I am asked, ' From whence do you derive the power of the govern- 
ment to pass and make law the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the 
Civil Rights Bill, especially the Civil Rights Bill ? ' I answer, ' I de- 
rive it from the fact that the government claims, and rightfully 
claims, the allegiance of those men, and therefore owes them its 
protection.' 

" I beheve it is conceded by all men now that the war has set- 
tled one other thing, that this is to be a land of only fi:ee people. 
It is not to be a land part slave and part free ; but it is to be a land 
of freemen ; freedmen, we say, with regard to some of our people 
to-day, those who were lately enslaved, but their children will not 
be freedmen, but free men. There are none in this land to-day, law- 
fully and rightfully, but free people, and this point even those who 
differ most widely from us all admit : that we are, and henceforth 
are to be, a nation of free men." 

Then, as to the blacks and their right to citizenship : — 

"While slavery existed, there was a tremendous class interest 
which was hostile to the recognition of human equahty. You 
could not expect human nature, such as it is, to give away, or to 
put away, $4,000,000,000 worth of property, even though we have 
grossly exaggerated our estimate of its value. But it is very hard 
for men to give up what is to them capital, wealth, ease, conse- 



494 RECONSTRUCTION. 

quence, importance, to throw this aside and say, ' No, "we will come 
down to a plain level with other people.' It is very hard to do 
this, and it is a good deal to ask them to do it. 

"But slavery being gone; no longer an interest; nothing but a 
prejudice to overcome, nothing but a rapacity reaching out for 
power, — I have no fears that they will last forever ; I have no 
fear that we shall go on quarrelling about a matter so perfectly 
clear as the right of freemen, four millions of freemen, to a voice in 
the government of their country. It cannot be that this question 
shall be settled wrong, when there is not on the face of the earth 
one other nation than this in which it is settled wrong. There are 
republics and hmited monarchies and aristocracies and despotisms 
but there is no other land but ours on earth where a freeman, sim- 
ply because of his color, is deprived of the essential rights of a free- 
man where everybody enjoys them. 

" Brazil is a slaveholding country, and has been for these three 
hundred years, but there the colored freeman has the same right 
as every other freeman. Now, then, I say it is not possible that 
this poor remnant of a bygone prejudice. — a prejudice which was 
perfectly intelligible while slavery existed in the country, — it is 
not possible that this poor remnant of a prejudice shall remain for- 
ever to distract and divide us. It will not be. We shall ultimately 
settle our differences on the basis of equal rights for all men before 
the law. 

"But when I say this, I never mean that the worthless, bad, 
profligate, desperate, wicked man has equal rights with the good 
man ; nobody believes he has or will have, but that the law will 
be so fixed, and the Constitution so amended, that every peaceable, 
good man shall have a voice in the government of his country. 
That we insist upon as his privilege, — not that every bad man 
shall vote, but that every man who is a good, law-abiding citizen 
shall have a voice in the government of his country. 

***** 

" The President says that if the freedmen are allowed to vote, 
the whites will kill them. Now I say I never heard a better argu- 
ment for letting them vote. If the men among whom they live are 
so unfriendly, that if the black men are permitted to vote they will 
kill them, certainly the men who cherish such a purpose are not 
worthy of being trusted with the rights of those black men. But 



HORACE Greeley's plan. 495 

this is only an exaggerated statement of a truth. A very great 
dishke, a hatred of the freedmen, does undoubtedly exist among 
the people of the South. They are a sore people, and very proud. 
They still feel revengeful toward those who defeated them in war ; 
and they do not feel quite strong enough to whip the Union for 
it, but they do feel able to punish the blacks, and no doubt a great 
many of them feel and say, ' We '11 make these niggers realize that 
hberty is not such a very fine thing for them as they think it is.' 

"Now, I say, if we allowed the people at the South who felt and 
fought with us to be cast, bound hand and foot, into the power of 
the people who fought against us, we can have no true prosperity, 
North or South. It will be as it was in Spain when she banished 
her Moors, the most industrious, thrifty, and ingenious of her popu- 
lation ; as it was in France when she expelled the Huguenots, and 
with them expelled productive manufacture and useful art, to her 
own great detriment and injury. If the late Rebels are allowed to 
work their will on the black population, they will never be satisfied 
until that population is either exiled or destroyed, driven out of the 
country or out of the world. Now, then, it becomes us, the loyal 
people of the North, who have profited by the good-wiU and the 
loyalty of the black people of the South, who have triumphed in 
the grandest struggle the world ever saw, in part by their ample 
aid, — for never yet was there a Northern soldier escaping from a 
Southern prison-house, no matter how great a copperhead he may 
have been at home, who did not seek the black man's cabin for 
aid, and shelter, and guidance; no Northern Democratic soldier, 
however strong may have been his party attachments, ever sought 
a Southern Democrat for shelter when he was escaping from prison, 
— it becomes us, I say, to see to it that these black Union men do 
not fall unprotected into the hands of their enemies." 

Every one knows how this affair of reconstruction has been com- 
phcated and delayed by the defection of President Johnson from 
the party which elected him. Mr. G-reeley was one of those who 
strove to prevent the disagreement between Congress and the Pres- 
.Xient, indications of which he early discovered. In September, 
1866, he thus related his endeavors to reunite the two diverging 
departments of the government : — 

" Soon after our last State election, and before the assembhng of 
the present Congress, I went, not uninvited, to Washington, ex- 



496 RECONSTRUCTION. 

pressly to guard against such a difference. Being admitted to an 
interview with the President, I urged him to call to Washington 
three of the most eminent and trusted expositors of Northern anti- 
slavery sentiment, and three equally eminent and representative 
Southern ex-Rebels, and ask them to take up their residence at the 
White House for a week, a fortnight, so long as they might find 
necessary, while they, by free and friendly conference and discus- 
sion, should earnestly endeavor to find a common ground whereon 
the North and the South should be not merely reconciled, but made 
evermore firaternal and harmonious. I suggested that the Presi- 
dent should occasionally, as he could find time, drop in on these 
conferences, and ofier such suggestions as he should deem fit, — 
rather as a moderator or common friend, than as a party to the 
discussion. 

^'A suggestion of names being invited, I proposed those of Gov- 
ernor Andrew of Massachusetts, G-erritt Smith of New York, and 
Judge R. P. Spaulding of Ohio, as three who seemed to me fair 
representatives of the antislavery sentiment of the North, while 
neither specially obnoxious to, nor disposed to deal harshly with, 
the South; and I added that I hoped they would be met by men 
like General Robert E. Lee, Alexander H, Stephens, &c., who 
would be recognized and heeded by the South as men in whose 
hands her honor and true interests would be safe. But I added 
that I had no special desire that these or any particular men should 
be selected, wishing only that those chosen firom either section 
should be such as to command their people's confidence and sup- 
port. And I pledged myself to support, to the extent of my power, 
any adjustment that should thus be matured and agreed upon. 

"Some two months later, after the meeting of Congress, and 
when the political sky had become darker, I went again to Wash- 
ington, on the assurance of a mutual friend that the President de- 
sired to see me. The joint committee on reconstruction had then 
been appointed. At an interview promptly accorded, I urged the 
President to invite this committee to the White House, and discuss 
with them, fi-om evening to evening, as friend with friends, all the 
phases of the grave problem of reconstruction, with a fixed resolve 
to find a basis of agreement if possible. I urged such considera- 
tions as occurred to me in favor of the feasibility of such agreement, 
if it were earnestly sought, as I felt sure it would be on the side of 



BAILING JEFFERSON DAVIS. 497 

Congress. The vast patronage in the President's hands, the reluc- 
tance of the majority in Congress to see their friends, supporters 
and nominees, expelled by wholesale from office, and their places 
supplied by bitter adversaries; the natural anxiety of every party 
in power to maintain cordial relations with the head of the govern- 
ment chosen by its votes, — these, and a thousand kindred consider- 
ations, rendered morally certain an agreement between Congress 
and the President, without a sacrifice of principle on either hand, if 
Jihe latter should sincerely seek it. 

" I speak only of what I said and proposed, because I have no 
permission and no right to speak further. That my suggestions 
were not followed, nor anything akin to them, the public sadly 
knows. And the conclusion to which I have been most reluctantly 
forced is, that the President did not want harmony with Congress, 
that he had already made up his mind to break with the party 
which had elected him, and seek a further lease of power through 
the favor and support of its implacable enemies." 

An interesting event in the life of Horace G-reeley, and in the 
history of the country, occurred in May, 1867, when he went to 
Richmond for the purpose of signing the bail-bond which restored 
to liberty Jefferson Davis, after two years' confinement in Fortress 
Monroe. " I went to Richmond," he says, " and signed the bond, 
simply because the leading counsel for the prisoner deemed it im- 
portant. If any other name would have answered as well, they 
would not have proffered mine : for they could easily have given 
ten millions of dollars, all of it by men who were worth double the 
amount for which they became responsible, and each of whom 
would have esteemed signing the bond a privilege. But the coun- 
sel believed it eminently desirable that they should present some 
Northern names, of men who had been conspicuous opponents of 
the Rebellion; perhaps because the application to admit to bail 
would otherwise be strenuously resisted. I know nothing of their 
reasons ; I only know that they would not have required me to 
face this deluge of mud if they had not believed it necessary." 

The bond was for the sum of one hundred thousand dollars, and 
was signed by twenty persons, among whom were Horace Gree- 
ley, John Minor Botts, Augustus Schell, G-erritt Smith, and Cor- 
nelius Yanderbilt. "A happier looking man," wrote one of the 
reporters, " never pledged himself for another's honor than Horace 
32 



498 RECONSTRUCTION. 

Greeley appeared, as he took the pen and affixed himself as surety 
upon the bond. He had scarcely laid down the pen and turned 
from the clerk's table, when Mr. Davis hastily put himself in hia 
way, and, grasping his hand, uttered a few warm words of ac- 
knowledgment. It was their first meeting, and he returned the 
pressure and ventured to hope, in a few homely sentences, that he 
had done his companion an essential service. 

"The announcement of Judge Underwood: 'The United States 
Marshal will now discharge the prisoner from custody,' was the 
signal for giving vent to the dehght that had been so imperfectly* 
schooled among the audience during the early progress of the pro- 
ceedings. For a moment the din was terrific, and would not be 
subdued by any amount of crying the peace by the Marshal. 

"Mr. Davis was seized, congratulated, and sobbed over, and in 
the same moment hurried from the court-room to the street, where 
a thousand people were uncovered and cheering as he passed. 
Ahghted from his carriage at the hotel, the crowd demanded audi- 
ence, and for two hours thereafter poured into his parlors, so tear- 
ful and happy, that it was impossible not to catch the infection. 
Later, Mr. Davis drove out with his friends, everywhere encoun- 
tering cheers and congratulations from the people surrounding his 
carriage-wheels to those upon the house-tops." 

If we may judge from the Southern newspapers, this act of the 
editor of the Tribune will do its part toward the reconciliation of 
the country. The Richmond Whig said : — 

" The generous course pursued toward Mr. Davis yesterday was one of the 
most effective reconsti-uction steps yet taken. It was indeed a stride in that 
direction. But the legal action taken was not all that we feel called upon to 
notice. That action was accompanied and embellished by circumstances of 
courtesy and cordial generosity from Northern and Republican gentlemen of 
distinction and influence, which will go far to commend them to the grateful 
consideration of the South. They joined our own Virginians in both bail- 
bonds and congi-atulations. In so doing, they illustrated their magnanimity, 
and in one moment levelled barriers that might otherwise have remained for 
yeai's. The effect of yesterday's work will be felt and shown throughout the 
South, or we much mistake Southern character. Let us all show that North- 
ern generosity is the tnie avenue to Southern friendship. We repeat, a great 
stride was yesterday taken in the line of reconstruction." 

The Lynchburg Virginian held the following language : — 

" We hail the event as an auspicious one, fraught with good, and recognize 



SPEECH AT RICHMOND. 499 

the pres 3nt as a fortunate time for both sections of the Union to set out with 
a new purpose, to bury their animosities, and meet together on a common 
ground of justice, peace, and fraternity. No one, we are sure, would do more 
to bring about such a result, or more rejoice at it, than he who was yesterday 
restored to the free air of heaven from the confines of his long incarceration." 

A Richmond letter published in the Baltimore Sun contained the 
following : — 

" The effect of his release in all parts of the State has been not only cheer- 
ing and exhilarating, but it has done more to promote good feeling, real cor- 
diality, toward the North and toward the government, than any event which 
has occurred since the close of the war. I have not seen till now any reason 
to believe that the South would, for years, do more than accept the situation, 
and content herself with a perfunctory performance of the obligations she has 
assumed ; but the release of Mr. Davis has touched the Southern heart, and I 
believe that it is at this moment beating strong to the old music of nationality 
and brotherly love. The appearance in court of Mr. Horace Greeley and Mr. 
Gerritt Smith, and their noble interposition in behalf of Mr. Davis, have had 
peculiar influence in bringing about this happy result. Our people look upon 
them as representative Northern men, and the hand thus stretched out to 
them they have grasped warmly. This time it is no dramatic grasp, but pal- 
pably honest, and prompted by full hearts." 

During Mr. Grreeley's stay at Richmond he was invited to ad- 
dress a public meeting at the African Church, which is usually used 
for political meetings, because of its great size. The main body of 
the church was filled with the most respectable citizens of Rich- 
mond, while the side aisles and galleries were crowded with colored 
men. Upon being introduced to the audience by the Governor of 
the State, he deUvered the following excellent speech : — 

" Friends and Fellow-Citizens: — I did not understand that my invita- 
tion to speak here to-night, hasty and informal as it was, was the dictate es- 
pecially of any party or section of this people. I understood that a few cit- 
izens of different views — perhaps I should rather say, of differing antecedents 
— wished to hear me on the prfesent aspect of our public affairs, and I con- 
sented to address them. Hence, I shall not regard myself as speaking here 
to-night for a party nor to a party. [Applause.] I shall speak as a citizen 
of New York to citizens of Virginia, on topics which concern oar common in- 
terest, our common country; and, while I shall speak with entire frankness, 
I trust you will realize that I speak in a spirit of kindness to all, and with ref- 
erence to the feelings of all. [Applause.] 

'"Shall the sword devour forever?' So asked of old a Hebrew 
prophet, standing amid the ruins of his desolated country. So I, an American 
citizen, standing amid some of the ruins of our great civil war, encircled by a 
hundred thousand graves of men who fell on this side and on that, in obe- 



500 



RECONSTRUCTION. 



dience to what they thought the dictates of duty and of patriotism, shall speak 
in the spirit of that prophet, asking you whether the time has not fully come 
when all the differences, all the heart-burnings, all the feuds and the hatreds 
which necessarily grew up in the midst of our great struggle, should be aban- 
doned forever? [Applause.] There have been rivers of blood shed; there 
have been mountains of debt piled up; and on every side sacrifices, sufferings, 
and losses attest the earnestness and the sincerity with which our people 
fought out this great contest to its final conclusion. 

" The wise king said, * There is a time for war and a time for peace.' I 
trust the time for war has wholly passed, — that the time for peace has fully 
come. What obstacles have for the last two years impeded, what obstacles 
still impede, the full realization of peace to this country? There may be 
what is called peace, which is only a mockery of peace, when people of dif- 
ferent sections and of different parties in a gi-eat struggle still look distrust- 
fully, hatefully, as it were, upon each other, and are unwilling to meet and to 
exchange civilities.' There may be an enforced quiet, an avoidance of posi- 
tive hostilities, and yet no peace, no real peace. What is it, then, that has so 
long in this country obstructed the advent of a real peace ? 

" The war for or against the Union virtually ended with the sun-ender of 
General Lee's army more than two years ago. Both parties felt that that sur- 
render was conclusive of the struggle; and, while much had been idly or 
boastingly said of twenty years of guerilla war, after the armies should be 
dispersed, yet, when the sun-ender was communicated to different sections of 
the South, the people everywhere said, ' This is the end of the war; there is 
no use in struggling any longer.' And, according to ordinary calculations, 
one year from that hour should have seen a perfect restoration of peace. 

*' Why have we not yet realized that expectation? 

" In the first place, when the national party, if I may so call it, — the party 
of the Union, — was in the first flush of a perfect, undivided triumph, an as- 
sassin's blow struck down the Chief Magistrate of the nation. I would be 
the last to argue, or to insinuate, that that was the act of the defeated party 
in the nation. [Applause.] Still, there were certain facts connected with it 
which tended to give an exceedingly malign aspect to that general calamity. 
The assassin and his fellow-conspirators were violent, vehement partisans of 
the Southern cause. I believe one of them had fought for it; while they 
had all been ardent champions of the principles upon which it was founded, 
and of the system of human bondage with which it was identified. It was the 
act of men who were heart and soul with the Confederacy, not merely in its 
efforts, but in its fundamental aspirations. 

" As the news was flashed across the country that its Chief had been stricken 
down in the hour of general exultation, his first assistant in the government 
even more foully stabbed and mangled on a bed of sickness and pain, and that 
co-ordinate efforts had been made to destroy the lives of other heads of the 
government, a cry of wild and passionate grief and wrath arose from the whole 
people. Those who had been pleading for magnanimity and mercy to the 
conquered, — who had been appealing to not unwilling ears in the few days 



SPEECH AT RICHMOND. 501 

intervening between tlie close of the war and the occurrence of that terrible 
calamity — were silenced in a moment by this appalling crime committed 
upon the person of our gi-eat and good President. The nation could not fairly 
consider, amid its blind rage and grief, that this assassination was the work 
of a few, unauthorized b'y and unknown to the gi-eat mass of those against 
whom their fury was directed. It was an unspeakable calamity, — a calam- 
ity to the Southern quite as much as to the Northern part of the country. 

"The military trials which followed that event — which, I might say, com- 
pleted the tragedy — were gratifications of the popular wrath which rather 
tended to stimulate than to appease it. They were the expressions of what 
the popular heart felt and desired at the time. For my part, I was opposed to 
them ; and I trust that all Americans have, by this time, learned to regret that 
the regular and ordinary tribunals of the country had not been allowed to deal 
with these criminals as they deal with others. [Applause.] 

" Before the popular frenzy had had time to subside, there assembled, under 
the military order of the President of the United States, conventions or legis- 
latures in the several Southern States, representing only, or mainly, those who 
had been defeated in our great struggle. I say the Southern conventions or 
legislatures which then met represented mainly those persons ; and the first 
aspect presented to the people of the North by the action of these legislatures 
was one of what I may mildly term unfriendliness toward the colored portion 
of the people of the South. 

" I am not here to discuss what absolutely was, but what was very appar- 
ent at that time. The Southern legislatures met, and began at once either to 
enact or revive laws discriminating harshly and unjustly against the colored 
people of the South, as if the object had been to punish them for their sym- 
pathy with the Union in the stniggle that had just closed. 

" I will here merely glance at the substance of these laws. You are familiar 
with them ; for some of them were passed in your own State. There, for in 
stance, are the laws in relation to man'iages, to contracts for labor, to arms- 
bearing, and to giving testimony in courts, which, if they ever had been neces- 
sary or wise, had utterly ceased to be applicable after the overthrow of slavery, 
and the institutions based upon it. I will not detain you by any comments 
upon these laws, but will content myself by bringing your attention to two of 
them, which have been revived in most of these States. 

" There are, first, the laws forbidding the black people of the South to bear 
anus. Now, so long as slavery existed here and in the other States of the 
South, it was perfectly reasonable and proper, so far as anything growing out 
jf slaver}^ was proper, that blacks should be foi'bidden to have arms in their 
hands. You may find fault with slavery, but you cannot find fault — slavery 
being admitted as a fact — with slaveholding legislatures for forbidding the col- 
ored people to hold and bear arms. It was not deemed compatible with public 
safety that blacks should be allowed to keep and use arms like white persons. 
But, the moment slavery had passed away, all possible pretexts for disarming 
Southern blacks passed away with it. Our Federal Constitution gives the 
right to the people everywhere to keep and bear arms ; and every law where- 



502 RECONSTRUCTION. 

by any State legislature undertakes to contravene this, being in conflict with 
the Constitution of the United States, had no longer any legal force. And, 
when it was seen that Confederate soldiers in their unifonns of gray went 
around to black men's houses, and took away arms which they had earned by 
fighting for the Union, and which had been assigned to them for honorable 
service, what could this look like but a revival of the Rebellion? 

"Then, as to this matter of testimony: I believe that sound, enlightened 
jurists, the world over, are agi-eed that it is the true rule of judicial procedure 
to admit all testimony, and allow the court and jury to decide as to its value. 
This is the just rule with regard to atheists, to children of tender years, to 
persons of evil repute, to persons presumed to be half-witted, &c. Let wit- 
nesses of all sorts and characters come forward and testify, and an enlightened 
judge, an intelligent jury, will have no difficulty in determining the value of 
the evidence. We in New York have admitted the testimony even of a wife 
for her husband, without detriment, so far as can be ascertained, to the cause 
of justice. There should be no exclusion from a privilege so palpably just 
and fair as this, especially when a discretion always remains with the court 
and jury before whom the testimony is given to regard it favorably or other- 
wise. When legislatures came together in this State and others, and pro- 
ceeded to enact or revive laws to establish that a black person may give testi- 
mony in controversies between two blacks, or possibly between a black and 
white, yet not in a suit between two whites, the common sense of the country 
was insulted, and its feelings outraged, by this odious and plainly arbitrary re- 
striction. For, when you say a black is fit to give testimony in a case be- 
tween a black and a white man, you must realize that he is at least as well 
qualified to give testimony in a controversy between two whites, where it is 
probable he would have no such bias or partiality as he might have if one of 
the parties were black. 

" I say, all these laws, invidious, unnecessary, and degrading as they were, 
looked to the people of the North like a revival of the Rebellion in a more in- 
sidious and a good deal less manly aspect than it wore on the heights of Fred- 
ericksburg and in the valley of the Chickamauga. It looked to us at the 
North, as if men who had been beaten in fair, stand-up fight chose to revive 
the contest in such a manner that they could annoy and irritate us without 
exposing themselves to the perils of battle or the penalties of treason. I say 
that this legislation, which prevailed more or less throughout the States of the 
Scuth, was one of the chief obstacles, and is one of the still remaining impedi- 
ments, to an early and genuine reconstruction of the Union. 

" I need not more than allude to the deplorable outrages at Memphis and 
New Orleans, which seemed to indicate the animus to this course of oppressive 
class-legislation. You may not probably know to how great an extent the 
public feeling and the elections of the North in the 3'^ear 1866 were affected by 
what we call the New Orleans massacre. I don't care to argue or assume 
that those who were the victims of those outrages were entirely right, nor that 
their adversaries or slaughterers were wholly wrong. It was a fact that the 
colored people of Louisiana were trying to get the right of suffrage, and by 



SPEECH AT RICHMOND, 503 

means which their friends thought legitimate. The other party, however, 
thought otherwise ; and instead of referring the matter to the general in com- 
mand, or to some peaceful tribunal, the reassembling of the old Constitutional 
Convention was made the pretext for an attack, which resulted in the slaugh- 
ter of some scores of American citizens, and in a very stern, sad revulsion of 
public sentiment to the prejudice of those of you who had been in arms against 
the Union. These outrages, this unwise and invidious legislation, fixed in the 
minds, I will not say of a majority of the people of the North, but in the minds 
of a very large proportion of the wise, intelligent, and conscientious people of 
the North, a convicti(jn which I think will not easily be shaken, that there 
can be no real peace in the Union, that there can be no tme reconstruction, 
without the hearty admission on the part of the Southern States, and the 
securing on the part of the nation, of the right of all men to be governed by 
equal laws, and to have an equal voice in making and administering those 
laws. [Applause.] I will not say that we who so hold constitute a great ma- 
jority of the Northern people ; but I will say that we are very many more than 
we were prior to the anti-negi'O enactments of Mr. Johnson's legislatures in 
the Southern States, and before the outrages of 1866 at Memphis and at New 
Orleans. I think that, before these collisions were reported to the North, the 
conviction tvas fixed in a great many minds, as it now is in a great many 
more, that no reconstruction would be real and enduring which did not in- 
clude guaranties for the rights of the colored people of the South ; and when I 
say rights, I mean their equal rights with any and all other persons. [Ap- 
plause by the negroes.] It is a vei"y common remark, and a very true one, 
that the North is in honor bound to guarantee the liberties of the black people 
of this country, because of their conduct during our gi-eat war. I have no 
doubt that this is true ; yet I deem it but half the truth. I hold the South 
equally bound to secure the same result, because of the conduct of 'the blacks 
toward the whites of the South in that same civil war. 

"I fully admit the obligations of the North (or the nation) to the blacks. 
Some may exaggerate their services, others unduly depreciate them; but 
there was the general fact, that, whereas, in the beginning of the war, when 
nothing was said about emancipation, the blacks of the South shouted with 
their masters without knowing much about the cause of the war, yet, as the 
struggle proceeded and became more deadly, and the North found itself obliged 
to proclaim emancipation as a means of putting down the resistance at the 
South, the sympathies of the colored people of the South, however silently ex- 
pi-essed, became from that hour more and more decided and unanimous on 
the side of the Union. They did not at first comprehend the contest; and yet 
thousands, from mere instinct, from what they heard at Southern barbecues 
and in their masters' houses, learned that the war on the part of the South was 
a war for slavery ; and they naturally argued that the war on the part of the 
North either was or must become a war for freedom. [Applause.] Now, 
then, I say that, while the Noi-th is under obligations to those people for thou- 
sands of acts of kindness toward our soldiers, who were sometimes scattered 
fts fugitives in a hostile territory, and for acts of positive aid on the battle-field 



504 RECONSTBUCTION. 

and in the camp, the South also owes a debt of gratitude to these people for 
their general fidelity and good-will, as well as good sense, displayed in resist- 
ing every temptation to take advantage of their masters' extremity to achieve 
at any cost their own liberties. I believe Southern men will do the blacks of 
the South the justice to say, that very often whole neighborhoods were almost 
stripped of white men of any considerable force, and lay wlv)lly at the mercy 
of those white men's slaves. These knew what the contest meant; they knew 
that they might, if they chose to do so, commit massacre, and, having deso- 
lated their masters' households, they might fly to the Yankees, by whom they 
reasonably hoped to be protected. But I do not know, out of the ten thousand 
instances where these temptations were presented, that there were even five 
cases in all where they were not resisted. You heard it said that Mr. Lincoln's 
proclamation was intended to put the knife to the throats of all the Southern 
whites, — that it was a general proclamation of liberty to kill and bum and 
ravage throughout the South. In that light, it was held up to general repro- 
bation. I ask you all to bear witness, that this prediction was nowhere justi- 
fied by the event. The colored people of the South who were still held as 
slaves uniformly felt that their aflection for their masters and their families 
was such, that they would be felons and outlaws, murderers and criminals of 
the deepest dye, if they should take advantage of their masters' absence in 
the war, to abuse their families. The Southern whites ought to feel, and I 
trust that many of them do feel, gratitude toward the colored people for their 
general deportment throughout the war. The blacks often ran away to the 
Union armies and enlisted there; but they took no undue advantage of the 
opportunities offered by their masters' distress or their masters' absence. 
[Applause.] 

" Fellow-citizens, there have been many instances wherein men held in slav- 
ery have been instantly or gradually, by one means or another, emancipated, 
biit I don't remember any instance where a fettered race was liberated from 
slavery, and yet kept for genei-ations in a servile, abject, degraded condition. 
There is the great slaveholding Empire of Brazil, — always slaveholding since 
it had any consequence at all, — wherein men who are slaves to-day may be 
free to-morrow, and thenceforth eligible to any trust, any office, being voters 
and citizens, precisely as though born free and white. Such was the course 
pursued by Great Britain in respect to the slaves emancipated in her colonies. 
Slavery is one thing, freedom another. But there is an intermediate condition, 
which is neither slavery nor liberty, that incites all the energy and aspiration 
of freemen, and yet involves more than half the disabilities of the slave. Such 
a condition as that, I believe, was never long maintained or endured in any 
civilized country. And yet that seems to be the condition which the domi- 
nant race in the South destined the blacks to occupy by the legislation of 
1865-66, — a condition which is neither slavery nor freedom, and one which 
men partly educated, and who felt themselves to a certain extent emancipated, 
would find utterly unbearable. 

" Let me here meet an objection which is sometimes offered. Some m^n 
Bay, ' The black people of the South are, to a great extent, ignorant and de- 



SPEECH AT RICHMOND. 505 

graded: ho-w then can you insist that they are qualified to enjoy all the priv- 
Deges of citizens? ' I say if you make ignorance a uniform ground of exclu- 
sion from political power, I can comprehend the justice of your rule, ymir 
objection. But so long as ignorance or degradation is no bar to citizensl-up 
as to white men, I protest against making it a bar to suffrage on the part of 
black men, who have excuses for ignorance which white men have not. [Aji- 
plause.] 

" But then, there are peculiar reasons why this race among us should havo 
its liberties secured by the most stringent, finnest guaranties. They are, and 
must remain, to some extent, a separate and peculiar people in the land. They 
will be exposed at every step to perils and antipathies which other men are 
not, not only because of their color, but because of their weakness as well. 
For they are not only a minority of our people, but their numerical impor- 
tance is steadily declining. When our first Federal census was taken, in ITC ■', 
they were nearly a fifth of our entire population; when our last census w'« 
taken, in 1860, they were but an eighth: and the child is now born who wiM 
see them no more than a twentieth. I do not believe that they will prove nr- 
able to hold their ground among us as freemen, nor that they will prove le-s 
prolific in freedom than in bondage. But there is no African immigration to 
this country, and never has been any voluntary immigration of negroes to any 
region outside of the tropics. They may be dragged into the temperate zone 
in fetters, as they have been; but in freedom, their tendency is wholly the 
other way. And, on the other hand, the waves of a great and steadily swell- 
ing European immigration are constantly breaking on our shores, depositir.g 
here some 250,000 persons per annum, mainly in the prime of youthful vigor. 
By this gigantic influx the character of our population is being constantly 
modified, so that the blacks, now a majority in two or three States, will soon 
be a minority in each, and an inconsiderable, powerless fraction of our who'e 
people. The present, therefore, is the accepted time to secure their rights. 
when there is a public interest felt in them, and when there are obligations 
of honor incumbent upon the whole country which it cannot well disregard 
Their equal rights as citizens are to be secured now or not at all. I insis'. 
then, in the name of justice and humanity, in the name of our country, aiiil 
of every righteous interest and section of that country, that the rights of ;> ' ! 
the American people — native or naturalized, bom such or made such — shaM 
be guaranteed in the State constitutions first, and in the Federal Constitution 
so soon as possible, — that we make it a fundamental condition of Americnn 
law and policy, that every citizen shall have, in the eye of the law, every rig' t 
of every other citizen. [Applause.] I would make the equal rights of the co'- 
ored people of the country, under the laws and the constitutions thereof. t1 " 
comer-stone of a true, beneficent reconstruction. [Applause.] I wish to 1 ■■ 
done with the topic at once and forever. I wish to have it disposed of ami 
out of the way, so that we can go on to other topics and other interests th't 
demand our attention. I long to say that we have settled forever the questi'^ ' 
of black men's rights by imbedding them in the constitutions of the States avl 
the nation, so that they cannot be disturbed evermore. If this had been 



506 RECONSTlfuCTION. 

promptly and heartily done two years ago, when the Johnson legislatures of 
the South first assembled, every State of the South would have been in the 
Union ere this, and every apprehension of penalties to be inflicted on the peo- 
ple of the South would have been banished forever. 

" But it is said that there are Republican States, or States under Republican 
rulers, which have not granted to the blacks their full rights. That is dis- 
gracefully true. The great mass of the Republicans have always insisted 
that black enfranchisement was a necessity, and have uniformly insisted that 
it should be effected. We have been resisted, and to some extent overborne, 
by a mere shred of our party combining with the Democrats to defeat us. 
Still, public sentiment has steadily improved, until nearly every Republican 
in the North, with many who have acted with the Democrats, now heartily 
favor a national guaranty of all rights to all. [Applause.] 

" If there be any who think the Republican party ought to be dissolved. 
— if there be one present who desires that it should get out of the way to give 
room for new combinations, — I say to him, help us to finish this controversy 
by imbedding in every constitution (State or national) a provision that every 
citizen shall have all the legal rights of every other citizen, and no more. Let 
Tis be done with this matter, and then we can move on to what may be the 
next question in order. [Applause.] 

" I come now to proscription as another obstacle, impediment, or whatever 
you may choose to call it, to the reconciliation of the Southern people to the 
Union. It is asked, and very cogently, ' How can you expect us to be recon- 
ciled to a government which denies us the right to vote or to hold oflSce under 
it?' Avery fair question. In my judgment, there is no reason why any 
man who, to-day, is a thoroughly loyal and faithful citizen of the United 
States, should be restrained from voting. This, however, is a matter which 
rests entirely with Congress ; and what I offer are my OAvn private views. It 
is just and wise to disfranchise men who are still disloyal, and who desire 
that disloyal men should obtain the mastery of this countiy, I deny that 
those who are implacably hostile to the national authority, — who are wan- 
dering off" to Brazil, to Mexico, &c. — have any natural right to a voice iu 
the government of the country. And that there is a class in the South w ho 
merely submit or acquiesce, — who are reconciled only so far that they don't 
choose to put themselves in the way of punishment, — there can be very little 
doubt. I hope the number of this class is comparatively small now, and that 
it is daily diminishing. May I not hope that the doings in this city this week 
have contributed somewhat to diminish its numbers ? The government should 
see that these dissatisfied men have no conti-ol in the country. The people . 
should deny to any man who would divide the country, or refuses to be recon- 
ciled to it, a share in its government. I accept the proscription embodied in 
the military reconstruction act of Congress, only as a precaution against /;res- 
ent disloyalty; and I believe the nation will insist on such proscription being 
removed, so soon as reasonable and proper assurances are given that disloyalty 
has ceased to be powerful and dangerous in the Southern States. 

" Then as to the question of confiscation, what is to be said ? What is the 



SPEECH AT RICHMOND. 507 

truth about confiscation ? I have been told, since I came here, that the col- 
ored people of this city and the State were refusing to buy for themselves 
homes, because they were imbued with the belief that Congress would very 
soon confiscate and distribute the lands of the Rebels of this State, and give 
each of them a share. If this be so, I beg you to believe that you are more 
likely to earn a home than get one by any form of confiscation. I have no 
right to speak for Congress, and cannot say what it will do ; but I have a right 
to say what Congress has done. Now we have had, since the war closed, two 
years of violent political contest. Acts have been done and feelings evinced 
in the South within those years which were strongly calculated to irritate the 
overwhelming majority in Congress. Then there has been at; the head — per- 
haps I should say the head and foot — of the movement for confiscation the 
very ablest as well as the oldest member of Congi-ess, Thaddeus Stevens of 
Pennsylvania, one of the strongest men who has been seen in Congress at any 
time, and who has achieved great influence at the North by forty years of 
uncompromising warfare against every species of human bondage. He has 
been the recognized leader of the House for the last six or eight years. Mr. 
Stevens has made speeches for confiscation, first, to his constituents ; next, in 
Congress ; and he has lately wi-itten a letter condemning those men who are 
'peddling out amnesty,' and insisting upon confiscation. But if any other 
member of Congi-ess has gravely proposed any measure of confiscation at all, 
I don't remember the fact; and if any committee of either house has reported 
any scheme of confiscation since the close of the war, I am not aware of it. I 
say no bill has been even reported which proposed to take away the property 
of persons merely because they have been Rebels, and give it to others because 
they were loyal. These are the facts in the past. You can judge of the future 
as well as I can. I don't mean to say that Congress could not be provoked to 
decree confiscation by menaces of violence and acts of outrage at the South. 
I don't pretend to know what Congi-ess may do under some conceivable cir- 
cumstances ; I state what it has done and has intimated its purpose to do, so 
far as I can speak from knowledge and recollection. 

" Let me speak for myself only as to the general policy of confiscation. If 
half the vacant, waste lands of the South could be instantly distributed among 
the landless, I have no doubt that the efi'ect would be beneficent. I think 
that such an allotment of a small farm to every poor man would do good to 
the many and no real harm to the few. But, when you come to the practical 
work of confiscation, it will be found a very tedious process that years would 
be required to consummate. And, meantime, what is to become of those who 
must live by their daily labor ? Who is to fence and cultivate the land ? What 
is to become of the great mass of the poor who must live by cultivating the 
earth ? When we reflect upon the general devastation of the South, by reason 
of the turmoil and ravage of war, and consider how all industry would be 
paralyzed by the prospect and the process of confiscation, we shall realize that 
inevitable evils of confiscation are too great to justify an experiment of this 
character. In my judgment, any general confiscation will produce general 
bankruptcy and desolating famine. I judge that the evils of such confiscation 
exceed all that have been experienced by the country in all its past convulsions. 



508 RECOXSTRUCTION. 

"Again: Mr. Stevens proposes to pay five hundred million dollars into the 
treasury by a ' mild process of confiscation.' I do not knoAV what could be 
done in this way; but I am very confident that all the confiscations that have 
ever taken place since men first went to war have not altogether resulted in 
putting five hundred million dollars into the public treasuries of nations. I do 
not speak of those confiscations whereby some gi-eat conquerors seized and 
appropriated the treasures and jewels of an Oriental king; I speak of the con- 
fiscation of individual property in the shape of lands and houses. Individuals 
have gi-own enormously rich by confiscation, have secured to themselves duke- 
doms and principalities ; but they were the men who worked the machinery 
[applause and laughter] ; the great mass derived no benefit, or very little, from 
their plunder. How much better are our functionaries to-day ? 

" Now, as to providing poor men with lands by any such process as this. I 
admit the premise that the poor should have lands. I have for many years 
advocated the policy of allowing every poor man to help himself to a portion 
of the public lands upon the easiest terms. There are hundreds of millions of 
acres still belonging to the Republic in the South as well as in the North and 
West, — in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, as well as in States 
farther north. These lands are public property, and one hundred and sixty 
acres of them are off"ered to actual settlers on the payment of ten dollars, 
which is charged to cover the expense of surveys, deeds, &c. I have always 
been in favor of encouraging settlement upon the public lands, and I am of the 
opinion now that it will be easier and much wiser for the colored man to 
acquire a home in this form than be vainly awaiting the possible chance of 
acquiring one by confiscation. 

" I may speak confidently of what has occurred in other lands ; and I say 
confidently that confiscation has rarely or never aided the poor to secure 
homes any more than it has filled treasuries. It has bred deadly feuds and 
perpetuated class hatreds. Many of the lands confiscated in Ireland two cen- 
turies ago by Cromwell are yet the occasion of strife and bitterness : the heirs 
of the original owners believing themselves to-day justly entitled to those lands, 
and that any means of recovering them, rebellion inclusive, would be justifiable. 

" I believe no man who is the true friend of our colored people would advise 
them to help themselves to the lands which had been wrested from their white 
neighbors by confiscation. I will not further insist upon the fact that confis- 
cation shrivels and paralyzes the industry of the whole community subjected 
to its influence ; but, in my judgment, if all the property of the Southern States 
were taken by confiscation to-mon-ow, and put up at auction, you could not 
get five hundred millions of dollars out of it and into the treasury. How fi-aud 
and perjury would flourish, what mountains of falsehood would be conjured 
up by the presence of general confiscation, I need not say. Instantly, every 
one who apprehended danger to his property would make a sham sale or trans- 
fer of it to some loyal cousin or nephew whom he thinks he can trust, to be 
kept until the proper time for its safe restoration; when he might find that his 
trusted relative had concluded to keep it. So it has been, so it would be. All 
manner of deceit, fraud, corniption, and miscellaneous iniquity flourishes in 
tne presence of any attempt at general confiscation. 



SPEECH AT RICHMOND 509 

" I do not approve of appeals to any particular class, and I make no claim 
to be a special friend of the colored people ; but this I say, friends and coun- 
trymen, since I have been here I have been more than ever before impressed 
with the exceeding cheapness of Virginia lands. I believe thei-e are lands selling 
to-day near this city at ten dollars per acre, which will be worth in a few years 
ten times that price; and I say to all, if you can buy lands in Virginia and pay 
for them, buy them ; for they are certain to be dearer in the early future. I 
am confident buying lands is the cheapest way of getting them. I am confi- 
dent that buying these lauds is the cheapest possible mode of securing a home- 
stead. Carlyle says that the great mistake of Rob Roy was his failure to re- 
alize that he could obtain his beef cheaper in the grass market of Glasgow than 
by hanying the lowlands ; and he will repeat that mistake who fails to secure 
a farm by purchase to-day in Virginia, because he hopes to obtain one under 
some future act of confiscation. 

" I urge you, poor men of Virginia, whether white or black, to secure your- 
selves homes of your own forthwith. If you can buy them here, do so, before 
the coming influx of immigi-ation shall have rendered lands too dear. If not, 
strike off to the public lands, South, North, and West, and hew out for your- 
selves homes as my ancestors did in New Hampshire, and as millions have done 
throughout the country. Become land-owners, all of you, so soon as you 
may. Own something which you can call a home. It wiU give you a deeper 
feeling of independence and of self-respect, and do not wait to obtain a home 
by confiscation. [Applause.] 

" ' Well,' says a Conservative, ' what you mean by all your talk is, that we 
may get back to self-government and representation in Congress, if we all be- 
come Republicans and vote the Radical ticket.' No, sir, I do not mean that. 
I heartily wish you wei'e all Republicans ; for I believe the Republican party, 
while it has made some mistakes, and includes perhaps its fair share of the 
fools and rascals, does yet embody the nobler instincts and more generous as- 
pirations of the American people. But many of you are not Republicans ; and 
I do not seek the votes of these for my ticket, except in so far as they shall be 
heartily converted to my fiiith. I expect the rest to vote what they call the 
Conservative ticket; and I ask of them only: 1. That they interpose no ob- 
stacle to any man's voting the Republican ticket who wants to; and, 2. That 
they select from their own ranks men who can take the oath prescribed by 
Congress, so that their choice shall nowise embarrass nor impede an early and 
complete reconstruction. Your way to restoration lies through the gate of 
cbedience, and I entreat you to take it pi-omptly and heartily. 

" Men of Virginia ! I entreat you to forget the years of slaverj--, and seces- 
sion, and civil war, now happily past, in the hopeful contemplation of the bet- 
ter days of freedom and union and peace, now opening before you. Forget 
that some of you have been masters, others slaves, — some for disunion, others 
against it, — and remember only that you are Virginians, and all now and 
henceforth freemen. Bear in mind that your State is the heart of a great 
Republic, not the frontier of a weaker Confederacy, and that your unequalled 
combination of soil, timber, minerals, and water-power fairly entitle you to a 



510 • RECONSTRUCflON. 

population of five millions before the -close of this century. Consider that the 
natural highway of empire — the shortest and easiest route from the Atlantic 
to the heart of the great valley — lies up the James Eiver and down the Kan- 
awha, and that this city, with its mill-power superior to any other in our coun- 
try but that of St. Anthony's Falls on the Mississippi, ought to insure you a 
speedy development of manufactures surpassing any Lowell or Lawrence, with 
a population of at least half a million, before the close of this century. I ex- 
hort you, then. Republicans and Conservatives, whites and blacks, to bury 
the dead past in mutual and hearty good-will, and in a general, united effort 
to promote the prosperity and exalt the glory of our long-distracted and bleed- 
ing, but henceforth reunited, magnificent country! " 

If there were those among the Repubhcans of the Northern 
States who dishked to see the editor of the Tribune assisting in the 
release of Jeflferson Davis, there were none who could be insensi- 
ble to the good sense and humanity of the speech which he was 
thus enabled to deliver in the capital of the late Confederacy. It 
appears to have astonished the people of Richmond, who have 
been hating an imaginary Horace Greeley for twenty-five years, 
to find that he was a human being. "We would not object," said 
the Richmond Whig, "to have him upon the jury if we were to be 
tried." 

Upon his return to ITew York, Mr. Greeley discovered that a 
large number of the Republican journals were criticising his con- 
duct with severity, while others were damning him with faint 
praise. The action of some members of the Union League Club 
of the city of New York, of which he is a member, called out 
the following letter: — 

"BY THESE PRESENTS, GREETING! 
"To Messrs. George W. Blunt, John A. Kennedy, John 0. Stone, 
Stephen Hyatt, and thirty others, members of the Union 
League Club : — 

" Gentlemen : — I was favored, on the 16th instant, by an ofiicial 
note from our ever-courteous President, John Jay, notifying me 
that a requisition had been presented to him for ' a special meeting 
of the Club at an early day, for the purpose of taking into consid- 
eration the conduct of Horace Greeley, a member of the club, who 
has become a bondsman for Jefierson Davis, late chief officer of the 
Rebel government.' Mr. Jay continues : — 

" ' As I have reason to believe that the signers, or some of them, disapprove 
Bf the conduct which they propose the Club shall consider, it is clearly due, 



LETTER TO THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB. 511 

both to the Club and to yourself, that you should have the opportunity of being 
heard on the subject ; I beg, therefore, to ask on what evemng it will be con- 
venient for you that I call the meeting,' &c., &c. 

" In my prompt reply I requested the President to give you rea- 
sonable time for reflection, but assured him that / wanted none ; 
since I should not attend the meeting, nor ask any friend to do so, 
and should make no defence, nor offer aught in the way of self- 
vindication. I am sure my friends in the Club will not construe 
this as implying disrespect ; but it is not my habit to take part in 
any discussions which may arise among other gentlemen as to my 
fitness to enjoy their society. That is their affair altogether, and 
to them I leave it. 

" The single point whereon I have any occasion or wish to ad- 
dress you is your virtual implication that there is something novel, 
unexpected, astounding, in my conduct in the matter suggested by 
you as the basis of your action, I choose not to rest under this 
assumption, but to prove that you, being persons of ordinary intelli- 
gence, must know better. On this point I cite you to a scrutiny 
of the record : — 

" The surrender of General Lee was made known in this city 
at 11 p. M. of Sunday, April 9, 1865, and fitly announced in the 
Tribune of next morning, April 10th. On that very day I wrote, 
and next morning printed in these columns, a leader entitled ' Mag- 
nanimity in Triumph,' wherein I said : — 

" * We hear men say: " Yes, forgive the great mass of those who have been 
misled into rebellion, but punish the leaders as they deserve." But who can 
accurately draw the line between leaders and followers in the premises ? By 
what test shall they be discriminated '?.... Where is your touchstone of 
leadership ? We know of none. 

" ' Nor can we agree with those who would punish the original plotters of 
secession, yet spare their ultimate and scarcely willing converts. On the con- 
trary, while we would revive or inflame resentment against none of them, we 
feel far less antipathy to the original upholders of " the resolutions of '98," — 
to the disciples of Calhoun and McDuffie, — to the nullifiers of 1832, and the 
•' State Rights" men of 1850, — than to the John Bells, Humphrey Marshalls, 
and Alexander H. H. Stuarts, who were schooled in the national faith, and 
who, in becoming disunionists and Rebels, trampled on the professions of a 
lifetime, and spurned the logic wherewith they had so often unanswerably 

demonstrated that secession was treason We consider Jefferson Davis 

this day a less culpable traitor than John BeU. 

" ' But we cannot believe it wise or well to take the life of any man who shall 



612 RECOXSTRUCTIOX. 

li:ive submitted to tne national authorit}'. The execution of even one sach 
\\ould be felt as a personal stigma by every one who had ever aided the Rebel 
cause. Each would say to himself, "I am as culpable as he; we differ only 
i'l that I am deemed of comparatively littlo consequence." A single Confed- 
oiiite led out to execution would be evermore enshrined in a million hearts as 
:i conspicuous hero and martyr. We cannot realize that it would be whole- 
some or safe — we are sure it would not be magnanimous — to give the over- 
powered disloyalty of the South such a shrine. Would the throne of the 
house of Hanover stand more firmly had Charles Edward been caught and 
t-xecuted after CuUoden? Is Austrian domination in Hungary more stable 
1 0-day for the hanging of Nagy Sandor and his twelve compatriots after the 
^ arrender of Vilagos ? 

" ' We plead against passions certain to be at this moment fierce and intol- 
erant; but on our side are the ages and the voice of history. We plead for a 
restoration of the Union, against a policy which would afford a momentary 
p-ratification at the cost of years of perilous hate and bitterness 

" ' Those who invoke military execution for the vanquished, or even for 
their leaders, we suspect will not generally be found among the few who have 
hnig been exposed to unjust odium as haters of the South, because they ab- 
horred slavery. And, as to the long-oppressed and degi-aded blacks, — so lately 
t!ie slaves, destined still to be the neighbors, and (we ti-ust) at no distant day 
rh.e fellow-citizens of the Southern whites, — we are sure that their voice, 
could it be authentically uttered, would ring out decidedly, sonorously, on the 
>iJe of clemency, of humanity.' 

•' On the next day I had some more in this spirit, and on the 
13th, an elaborate leader, entitled 'Peace, — Punishment,' in the 
course of which I said : — 

" ' The New York Times, doing injustice to its own sagacity in a character- 
istic attempt to sail between wind and water, says: "Let us hang Jefferson 
iJavis and spare the rest." .... We do not concur in the advice. Davis did 
i!<)t devise nor instigate the Rebellion; on the contrary, he was one of the latest 
:iul most reluctant of the notables of the Cotton States to renounce definitively 
tie Union. . His prominence is purely official and representative: the only 
reason for hanging him is that you therein condemn and stigmatize more pei-- 
>()ns than in hanging any one else. There is not an ex-Rebel in the world — 
:io matter how penitent — who will not have unpleasant sensations about the 
neck on the day when the Confederate President is to be hung. And to what 
good end? 

" ' We insist that this matter must not be regarded in any nan-ow aspect. 
We are most anxious to secure the assent of the South to emancipation; not 
that assent which the condemned gives to being hung when he shakes hands 
with his jailer and thanks him for past acts of kindness; but that hearty as- 
sent which can only be won by magnanimity. Perhaps the Rebels, as a body, 
would have given, even one year ago, as large and as hearty a vote for hanging 
the writer of this article as any other man living; hence, it more especially 



LETTER TO THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB. 513 

Beem? to him important to prove that the civilization based on free labor is of 
a higher and humaner type than "that based on slavery. We cannot realize 
that the gratification to enure to our friends from the hanging of any one man, 
or fifty men, should be allowed to outweigh this consideration.' 

" On the following day I wrote again : — 

" ' We entreat the President promptly to do and dare in the cause of mag- 
nanimity. The Southern mind is now open to kindness, and may be mag- 
netically afljected by genei'osity. Let assurance at once be given that there 
is to be a general amnesty and no general confiscation. This is none the 
less the dictate of wisdom, because it is also the dictate of mercy. What we 
ask is, that the President say in effect, " Slavery having, through rebellion, 
committed suicide, let the North and the South unite to bury the carcass, and 
then clasp hands across the grave." ' 

" The evening of that day witnessed that most appalling calamity, 
the murder of President Lincoln, which sbemed in an instant to 
curdle all the milk of human kindness in twenty millions of Ameri- 
can breasts. At once insidious efforts were set on foot to turn the 
. fury thus engendered against me, because of my pertinacious ad- 
vocacy of mercy to the vanquished. Chancing to enter the Club- 
House the next (Saturday) evening, I received a full broadside of 
your scowls, ere we listened to a clerical harangue intended to 
prove that Mr. Lincoln had been providentially removed because 
of his notorious leanings toward clemency, in order to make way 
for a successor who would give the Eebels a full measure of stern 
justice. I was soon made to comprehend that I had no sympathiz- 
ers — or none who dared seem such — in your crowded assem- 
blage. And some maladroit admirer having, a few days afterward, 
made the Club a present of my portrait, its bare reception was re- 
sisted in a speech from the chair by your then President, — a speech 
whose vigorous invective was justified solely by my pleadings for 
lenity to the Rebels. 

"At once a concerted howl of denunciation and rage was sent up 
from every side against me by the little creatures whom God, for 
some inscrutable purpose, permits to edit a majority of our minor 
)ournals, echoed by a yell of ' Stop my paper ! ' from thousands of 
imperfectly instructed readers of the Tribune. One impudent 
puppy wrote me to answer categorically whether I was or was not 
in favor of hanging Jefferson Davis, adding that I must stop his 
paper if I were not ! Scores volunteered assurances that I was de- 
fying public opinion ; that most of my readers were against me ; as 



514 RECONSTRUCTION. 

if I could be induced to write what they wished said rather than 
what they needed to be told. I never before realized so vividly 
the baseness of the editorial vocation, according to the vulgar con- 
ception of it. The din raised about my ears now is nothing to that 
I then endured and despised. I am humiliated by the reflection 
that it is (or was) in the power of such insects to annoy me, even 
by pretending to discover with surprise something that I have for 
years been publicly, emphatically proclaiming. 

" I must hurry over much that deserves a paragraph, to call your 
attention distinctly to occurrences in November last. Upon the 
Republicans having, by desperate effort, handsomely carried our 
State against a formidable-looking combination of recent and ven- 
omous apostates with our natural adversaries, a cry arose from sev- 
eral quarters that I ought to be chosen United States Senator. At 
once, kind, discreet friends swarmed about me, whispering, 'Only 
keep still about universal amnesty^ and your election is certain. Just 
be quiet a few weeks, and you can say what you please thereafter. 
You have no occasion to speak now,' I slept on the well-meant 
suggestion, and deliberately concluded that I could not, in justice 
to myself, defer to it. I could not purchase office by even passive, 
negative dissimulation. No man should be enabled to say to me, 
in truth, 'If I had supposed you would persist in your rejected, 
condemned amnesty hobby, I would not have given you my vote.* 
So I wrote and published,, on the 27th of that month, my manifesto 
entitled 'The True Basis of Reconstruction,' wherein, repelling the 
idea that I proposed a dicker with the ex-Rebels, I explicitly said : — 

** ' I am for universal amnesty, so far as immunity from fear of punishment 
or confiscation is concerned, even though impartial suffrage should, for the 
present, be defeated. I did think it desirable that Jefferson Davis should be 
an-aigned and tried for treason ; and it still seems to me that this might prop- 
erly have been done many months ago. But it was not done then ; and now 
I believe it would result in far more evil than good. It would rekindle pas- 
sions that have nearly burned out or been hushed to sleep ; it would fearfully 
convulse and agitate the South; it would arrest the progress of reconciliation 
and kindly feeling there ; it would cost a large sum directly, and a far larger in- 
directly ; and, unless the jury were scandalously packed, it would result in a 
non-agreement or no verdict. I can imagine no good end to be subsei'ved by 
such a trial; and, holding Davis neither better nor worse than several others, 
would have him treated as they are.' 

" Is it conceivable that men who can read, and who were made 



LETTER TO THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB. ' 515 

aware of this declaration, — for most of you were present and 
shouted approval of Mr, Fessenden's condemnation of my views at 
the Club, two or three evenings thereafter, — can now pretend that 
my aiding to have Davis bailed is something novel and unexpected? 

" Gentlemen, I shall not attend your meeting this evening. I 
have an engagement out of town, and shall keep it. I do not rec- 
ognize you as capable of judging, or even fully apprehending me. 
You evidently regard me as a weak sentimentahst, misled by a 
maudlin philosophy, I arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads, 
who would like to be useful to a great and good cause, but don't 
know how. Your attempt to base a great, enduring party on the 
hate and wrath necessarily engendered by a bloody civil war, is as 
though you should plant a colony on an iceberg which had some- 
how drifted into a tropical ocean. I tell you here, that, out of a life 
earnestly devoted to the good of human kind, your children will 
select my going to Richmond and signing that bail-bond as the 
wisest act, and will feel that it did more for freedom and humanity 
than all of you were competent to do, though you had Hved to the 
age of Methuselah. 

" I ask nothing of you, then, but that you proceed to your end 
by a direct, frank, manly way. Don't sidle off into a mild resolu- 
tion of censure, but move the expulsion which you purposed, and 
which I deserve, if I deserve any reproach whatever. All I care 
for is, that you make this a square, stand-up fight, and record your 
judgment by yeas and nays. I care not how few vote with me, 
nor how many vote against me ; for I know that the latter will re- 
pent it in dust and ashes before three years have passed. Under- 
stand, once for all, that I dare you and defy you, and that I propose 
to fight it out on the hne that I have held from the day of Lee's 
surrender. So long as any man was seeking to overthrow our 
government, he was my enemy; from the hour in which he laid 
down his arms, he was my formerly erring countryman. So long 
as any is at heart opposed to the national unity, the Federal author- 
ity, or to that assertion of the equal rights of all men which has 
become practically identified with loyalty and nationality, I shall 
do my best to deprive him of power ; but, whenever he ceases to 
be thus, I demand his restoration to all the privileges of American 
citizenship. I give you fair notice, that I shall urge the re-enfran- 
Ghisement of those now proscribed for rebellion so soon as I shall 



516 RECONSTRUCTION. 

feel confident tliat this course is consistent with the freedom of the 
1 )lacks and the unity of the EepubHc, and that I shall demand a re- 
call of all now in exile only for participating in the Rebellion, when- 
ever the country shall have been so thoroughly pacified that its 
safety will not thereby be endangered. And so, gentlemen, hop- 
ing that you will henceforth comprehend me somewhat better than 
you have done, I remain, 

''Yours, 

"Horace G-reelet. 
"New York, May 23, 1867." 

The meeting of the Club was held at the time appointed, and 
continued in session for nearly four hours. Two hundred mem- 
1 )ers were present. The following resolutions were moved : — 

" Whereas, It is declared in the articles of association of the Union League 
Club, that 'the primary object of the association shall be to discountenance 
and rebuke, by moral and social influences, all disloyalty to the Federal gov- 
ernment,' and that ' to that end the members will use every proper means in 
public and private ' ; and 

" Whereas, Jefferson Davis has been known by all loyal men as the ruling 
spirit of that band of conspirators who urged the Southern States into rebel- 
lion; as the chief enemy of the Eepublic, not more from the position which he 
occupied in the Rebel Confederacy than from the vindictive character of his 
official acts and utterances during four years of desolating civil war; and as one 
who knew of, if he did not instigate, a treatment of prisoners of war unwar- 
ranted by any possible circumstances, unparalleled in the annals of civilized 
nations, and which, there is abundant evidence to prove, was deliberately de- 
vised for the purpose of destroying them ; and 

" Whereas, Horace Greeley, a member of this Club, has seen fit to become 
a bondsman for this man, whose efforts were for many years directed to the 
overthrow of our government; therefore 

^^ Resolved, That this Club would do injustice to its past record, and to the 
liigh principle embodied in its articles of association, should it fail to express 
regret that one of its members had consented to perform an act of this nature. 

•' Resolved, That this Club, while ready and anxious to vindicate the law of 
the land, cannot forget that there is also a sense of public decency to which it 
jnust defer; and that no one of its members, however eminent his services may 
liave been in the cause of liberty and loyalty, can give aid and comfort to Jef- 
ferson Davis without offering a cruel insult to the memory of the thousands of 
our countrymen who perished, the victims of his ambition. 

•' Resolved, That the Union League Club disapprove of the act of Horace 
Greeley, in becoming the bondsman of Jefferson Davis. 

'^Resolved, That these resolutions be published in the newspapers of this 
city, and that a copy of them be sent to Mr. Greeley." 



RESOLUTIONS OF UNION LEAGUE CLUB. 517 

These resolutions were not adopted. The following was pro- 
posed, and received a majority of the votes of those present ; — 

^^ Resolved, That there is nothing in the action of Horace Greeley, relative 
to the bailing of Jefferson Davis, calling for proceedings in this Club " 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

Horace Greeley upon poetry and the poets — He objects to being enrolled among the poet« 
— His advice to a country editor — His religious opinions — Upon marriage and divorce 
— His idea of an American college — How he would bequeath an estate — How he be- 
came a protectionist — Advice to ambitious young men — To the lovers of knowledge— 
To young lawyers and doctors — To country merchants — How far he is a politician — A 
toast — Reply to begging letters. 

From a great heap of clippings, which have been accumulating 
for many years, I select a few which throw light upon the charac- 
ter of the man. 

HIS PECULIAR OPINIONS RESPECTING POETPV 

One of Mr. G-reeley's lectures is upon poetry and poets, and it 
contains some opinions so curious and original that I insert an 
outline of it : — 

" All men, he said, are bom poets ; not that he meant to imply that every 
cradle held an undeveloped Shakespeare, — far from it. But it was not the 
less tnie that young children were poets. The child who thought the stars 
were gimlet-holes to let the glory of heaven through, was a poet. The un- 
coiTupted child instinctively perceives the poetic element in nature. Every 
close observer must have noticed how naturally the unschooled child comes 
to talk poetically. Emerson says the man who first called another a puppy or 
■an ass was a poet, discerning in those animals the likeness of the individual, 
symbolic of his moral nature. Imagination and the poetic element are ever 
most fertile in the youth, whether of men or nations, and to this might be 
ascribed that wild extravagance of our popular stories, — of the land being so 
fertile that if you planted a crow-bar overnight, in the morning it would be 
sprouting forth iron spikes and tenpenny nails, or of the pumpkin-vine that 
grew so fast that it outran the steed of the astonished traveller. The English- 
man was so fenced in by forms and rules and conventionalities, that the poetic 
element was choked out of him. Hence, the English poets were more appre- 
ciated in America than in England, and there were more Americans who read 
Scott and Byron, and, he believed, Shakespeare, than there were Englishmen. 

" The most vulgar eiTor of a vulgar mind, with respect to poetry, was the 

confounding it with verse, or with even rhyme. Fond mothers would take 

from some secret drawer the cherished productions of her children, imagining 

that because they were in rhyme they were therefore poetry, when indeed 

518 



HIS PECULIAR OPINIOXS RESPECTING POETRY. 519 

there was no more poetry in them than in an invitation to pass the baked po- 
tatoes. To the fresh, unhackneyed soul, rhyme was as repulsive as a fools- 
cap and bells. Many of the best poems were not Avritten metrically. Ban- 
yan's Pilgrim's Progress was the epic of Methodism, but he wrote hideous 
doggerel when he attempted verse, as the introduction to that work proved. 
There can scarcely be a surer proof that a youth has ceased to be a poet than 
when he begins to rhyme. Yet the poet of our day must be a vassal to the 
onerous nile. A wild colt of a young bardling will now and then spurn the 
yoke, as Donald Clark did, and Walt Whitman is doing ; but the latter, though 
he had received the commendation of one of our gi-eatest poets, would never 
receive sufficient notice from the critics to be knocked in the head by a vol- 
ume of the Edinburgh Review. 

" The Book of Job the lecturer considered the simplest, grandest, as wt;ll as 
oldest of pastoral poems. David, the warrior-king, had bequeathed to us 
psalms in which were to be found a more fitting interpi-etation of our aspira- 
tions and spiritual needs than in all the religious poets of the intervening ages. 
He reigns King of Psalmody till time shall be no more. 

" Of Greek poetry Mr. Greeley said he had no right to say much. The 
Greek epic held substantially the place of the modem novel. Greek life, 
as depicted by Homer, was inide and stern, and not distinguished for its vir- 
tues. About the merit of Homer's poems, it might be imprudent to contradict 
the verdict of scholars who ranked them so high, but he would secretly cher- 
ish his own opinion. Where was the youth, in England or this country, who 
sought a translation of the Iliad for amusing reading? There were ten copies 
of the Arabian Nights read for one of Homer. Still, we must be grateful to 
the epic for originating tragedy. ^Eschylus was the lineal child of Homer. 

" Of the Romans the lecturer said that they were never a poetic people. 
They had Horace, an Epicurean, philosophizing inverse; Juvenal, a biting 
satirist; Virgil, a weaver of legendary lore, — but the compositions of these 
writers smell of the land, while from the Augustan age to Dante there was 
nothing worth reading. One must be as devout a Catholic as Dante to enjoy 
his Inferno. 

" Pi-oceeding to the consideration of English poetry, Mr. Greeley had noth- 
ing to say in favor of Chaucer or Spenser. Whoever, he asked, sat down to 
read them otherwise than as a task ? For his part, he voted the Faerie Queene 
a bore. Let the gathering dust bury it out of sight. 

" Shakespeare he did not love, because of his Toryism, but was not insensi- 
ble to his wonderful genius. His puns were, in the lecturer's opinion, mostly 
detestable, and his jokes sorry. He was an intense Tory. No autocrat bom 
in the purple had a more thorough contempt for the rabble. With Shake- 
speare only the court cards counted. His world was bounded by the fogs of 
London and the palace of WTiitehall. He must have heard Raleigh and Drake, 
and other adventurous spirits, who had visited America, talk of the New 
World, and yet he never referred to any portion of it, except in that inaccu- 
rate allusion ' the still-vexed Bermoothes.' He was no friend of the people. 
He saw in the million only the counters wherewith kings and nobles played 



520 MISCA-LANEOUS. 

their games, and he did not recognize the possibility of their becoming any- 
thing else. Mr. Greeley would not say which was the greater poet, but he 
would say that Milton was the better man. There was not a single passage in 
Shakespeare which did his manhood such honor as Milton's two sonnets on 
his blindness. 

" Of the English poets, after Milton and prior to the present century, Pope 
alone was desei-ving of mention. Not that he was a poet at all, but a very 
respectable philosopher. Of Goldsmith, Thomson, Gray, Young, Cowper, it 
might be said that they were not poets, but essayists and sermonizers. They 
have produced nothing which mankind could not well spare. Let them qui- 
etly sink into oblivion. 

" Mr. Greeley gave Burns the praise of having written true poetry, after the 
age had been satiated Vvith a heap of mediocre or worthless verse. In his 
poems might be found the fitting answer of the dumb millions to the taimts 
and slurs of Shakespeare. 

" Of the present poetical era Keats was the morning star. Byron held the 
highest place among modem poets, though the influence of much that he had 
written was bad. As Goethe could not have modelled his ]\Iephistopheles 
on B}Ton's life, it had been said that BjTon must have modelled his life on 
Goethe's Mephistopheles. BjTon's life has never yet been properly written, 
and it would indeed be a difficult task to write a life of him that would suit 
the Sunday schools. 

" Coleridge, Rogers, Southe}^, Campbell, — with the exception of one or twc 
little poems of each, — literature, the lecturer thought, could spare them all. 
Wordsworth was a remarkable instance of tenacity. He began his poetical 
life with a theory, and, though possessed of no remarkable powers, he per- 
sisted in his theory, and finally conquered his critics. The credit of that 
theory, however, was not so much due to Wordsworth as to Mrs. Hemans, 
whose poetry Mr. Gi-eeley greatly praised. 

" Of Hood he spoke in high terms. Tennyson he lauded warmly, instan- 
cing the In Memoriam, The Princess, and Maud as foremost among the gems 
of English literature. 

" Of Robert Browning he said the reading public knows too little. Even in 
England he startled some of his judicious friends by saying that he was not 
inferior to Tennyson. He especially indicated the Blot in the Scutcheon, 
Pippa Passes, and Paracelsus as among the best poems of the century. Eliz- 
abeth Barrett Browning, the wife of Robert, received due praise from Mr. 
Greeley, especially for her poem of Aurora Leigh." 

HE OBJECTS TO BEING ENROLLED AMONG THE POETS. HORACE GREE- 
LEY TO ROBERT BONNER. 

" New York, February, 1859. 
"Mr. Bonner: — I perceive by your Ledger that you purpose to 
publish a volume (or perhaps several volumes) made up of poems 



HE OBJECTS TO BEING ENROLLED AMONG THE POETS. 521 

not contained in Mr. Dana's Household Book of Poetry, and I 
heartily wish success to your enterprise. There are genuine poems 
of moderate length which cannot be found in that collection, ex- 
cellent as it palpably is, and superior in value, as I deem it, to any 
predecessor or yet extant rival. There arc, moreover, some gen- 
uine poets whose names do not figure in Mr. Dana's double index ; 
and I thank you for undertaking to render them justice ; only take 
care not to neutralize or nullify your chivalrous championship by 
burying them under a cartload of rhymed rubbish, such as my 
great namesake plausibly averred that neither gods nor men can 
abide, and you will have rendered literature a service and done 
justice to slighted merit. 

"But, Mr. Bonner, be good enough — you must — to exclude me 
from your new poetic Pantheon. I have no business therein, — no 
right and no desire to be installed there. I am no poet, never was 
Cin expression), and never shall be. True, I wrote some verses in 
my callow days, as I presume most persons who can make intelh- 
gible pen-marks have done ; but I was never a poet, even in the 
mists of deluding fancy. All my verses, I trust, would not fill one 
of your pages ; they were mainly written under the spur of some 
local or personal incitement, which long ago passed away. Though 
in structure metrical, they were in essence prosaic: they were 
read by few, and those few have kindly forgotten them. Within 
the last ten years I have been accused of all possible and some im- 
possible offences against good taste, good morals, and the common 
weal, — I have been branded aristocrat, communist, infidel, hypo- 
crite, demagogue, disunionist, traitor, corruptionist, &c., &c., — but 
I cannot remember that any one has flung in my face my youthful 
transgressions in the way of rhyme. Do not, then, accord to the 
malice of my many enemies this forgotten means of annoyance. 
Let the dead rest ! and let me enjoy the reputation which I covet 
and deserve, of knowing poetry from prose, which the ruthless res- 
urrection of my verses would subvert, since the undiscerning ma- 
jority would bhndly infer that / considered them poetry. Let me 
up! "Thine, 

"Horace Gtreelet." 



522 MISCELLAJTEOUS. 

HORACE Greeley's advice to a country editor. 

" New York, April 3, 1860. 

" Friend Fletcher : — I have a line from you, informing me that 
you are about to start a paper at Sparta, and hinting that a Hne 
from me for its first issue would be acceptable. Allow me, then, 
as one who spent his most hopeful and observant years in a coun- 
try printing-office, and who sincerely believes that the art of con- 
ducting country (or city) newspapers has not yet obtained its ulti- 
mate perfection, to set before you a few hints on making up an 
interesting and popular gazette for a rural district like yours. 

'' I. Begin Avith a clear conception that the subject of deepest 
interest to an average human being is himself; next to that, he is 
most concerned about his neighbors. Asia and the Tongo Islands 
stand a long way after these in his regard. It does seem to me 
that most country journals are oblivious as to these vital truths. 
If you will, so soon as may be, secure a wide-awake, judicious cor- 
respondent in each village and township of your county, — some 
young lawyer, doctor, clerk in a store, or assistant in a post-office, 
— who will promptly send you whatever of moment occurs in his 
vicinity, and will make up at least half your journal of local matter 
thus collected, nobody in the county can long do without it. Do 
not let a new church be organized, or new members be added to 
one already existing, a farm be sold, a new house be raised, a mill 
be set in motion, a store be opened, nor anything of interest to a 
dozen families occur, without having the fact duly though briefly 
chronicled in your columns. If a farmer cuts a big tree, or grows 
a mammoth beet, or harvests a bounteous yield of wheat or corn, 
set forth the fact as concisely and unexceptionably as possible. In 
due time, obtain and print a brief historical and statistical account 
of each township, — who first settled in it, who have been its prom- 
inent citizens, who attained advanced years therein, &c. Record 
every birth as well as every marriage and death. In short, make 
your paper a perfect mirror of everything done in your county 
that its citizens ought to know ; and, whenever a farm is sold, try 
to ascertain what it brought at previous sales, and how it has been 
managed meantime. One year of this, faithfully followed up, will 
fix the value of each farm in the county, and render it as easily de- 
termined as that of a bushel of corn. 

" II. Take an earnest and active, if not a leading, part in the 



HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 523 

advancement of home industry. Do your utmost to promote not 
only an annual county Fair, but town Fairs as well. Persuade 
each farmer and mechanic to send something to such Fairs, though 
it be a pair of well-made shoes from the one or a good ear of corn 
from the other. If any one undertakes a new branch of industry 
in the county, especially if it be a manufacture, do not wait to be 
solicited, but hasten to give him a helping hand. Ask the people 
to buy his flour, or starch, or woollens, or boots, or whatever may 
be his product, if it be good, in preference to any that may be 
brought into the county to compete with him. Encourage and aid 
him to the best of your ability. By persevering in this course a 
few years, you will largely increase the population of your county 
and the value of every acre of its soil. 

" III. Don't let the politicians and aspirants of the county own 
you. They may be clever fellows, as they often are ; but, if you 
keep your eyes open, you will see something that they seem blind 
to, and must speak out accordingly. Do your best to keep the 
number of public trusts, the amount of official emoluments, and the 
consequent rate of taxation other than for common schools, as low 
as may be. Remember that — in addition to the radical righteous- 
ness of the thing — the tax-payers take many more papers than the 
tax-consumers. 

" I would like to say more, but am busied excessively. That you 
may deserve and achieve success is the earnest prayer of 
" Yours, truly, 

" Horace G-reelet, 

" Tribune Office, New York." 

HIS RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. 

"New York, Sunday, February 10, 1855. 
" To THE Editor of the Christian Ambassador : — 

" My Dear Sir : — J find in your issue of this date an extract 
from the Rome Excelsior, asserting that I am not a Universalist, to 
which you have appended an explicit denial. I could have wished 
that no necessity for such denial had arisen, and I am very sure 
that the Excelsior intended to state the truth. Yet its assertion, 
on whatever incidental expression or conversation it may have 
been based, is certainly erroneous. I have for thirty years ear- 
nestly hoped and believed that our Father in heaven will, in his 



524 MISCELLANEOUS. 

own good time, bring the whole human race into a state of willing 
and perfect reconciliation to himself and obedience to his laws, — 
consequently one of complete and unending happiness. But as to 
the time when and the means whereby this consummation is to be 
attained, I have no immovable conviction ; though my views have 
generally accorded nearly with those held by the Unitarian Resto- 
rationists. In other words, I believe that the moral character 
formed in this life will be that in which we shall awake in the life 
to come, and that many die so deeply stained and tainted by lives 
of transgression and depravity, that a tedious and painful discipline 
must precede and prepare for their admission to the realms of eter- 
nal purity and bliss. I can only guess that the Excelsior's article 
was based upon some conversation in which this expose of my be- 
lief was prominently set forth. And yet I cannot recollect that I 
ever changed a word with its editor on the subject of theology. 

" Your statement that I am a member of Mr. Chapin's church 
organization, and a communicant therein, impels me to say that, 
though a member of his society from the day of his settlement 
among us, I am not technically a member of his church, but of that 
in Orchard Street, in which I was a pew-holder, until Dr. Sawyer's 
removal from our city to Clinton, when I attached myself to the 
society which is now Mr. Chapin's. And, believing the ordinance 
of the Lord's Supper, as now celebrated among us, a fearful imped- 
iment to the progress and triumph of the principle of total absti- 
nence from all that can intoxicate. I have for some time past felt it 
my duty to abstain from it, awaitmg and hoping for the day when 
Christians of every name shall realize that the blood of our Saviour 
is not truly represented by the compounds of vile and poisonous 
drugs commonly sold here as wme, nor yet by any liquid essen- 
tially alcoholic, therefore intoxicating. If a few more would unite 
in this protest, we should soon have no other wine used in the Eu- 
charist than that freshly and wholly expressed from grapes, — a 
liquid no more intoxicating or poisonous than new milk or toast- 
water. And then we shall cease to hear of reformed drunkards 
corrupted and hurled back into the way of ruin? by a vicious thirst 
reawakened at the communion-table. 

" Eegretting both the necessity for and the length of this ex- 
planation, I remain. Yours, 

" Horace Gtreeley. 

" Rev. J, M. Austin." 



HIS OPINION RESPECTING MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 525 

HIS OPINION RESPECTING MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. 

" I am perfectly willing to see all social experiments tried that 
any earnest, rational being deems calculated to promote the well- 
being of the human family; but I insist that this matter of marriage 
and divorce has passed beyond the reasonable scope of experiment. 
The ground has all been travelled over and over, — from indissolu- 
ble -monogamic marriage down through polygamy, concubinage, 
easy divorce, to absolute free love, mankind have tried every possi- 
ble modification and shade of relation between man and woman. 
If these multiform, protracted, diversified, infinitely repeated ex- 
periments have not established the superiority of the union of one 
man to one woman for life, — in short, marriage, — to all other 
forms of sexual relation, then history is a deluding mist, and man 
has hitherto lived in vain. 

" But you assert that the people of Indiana are emphatically moral 
and chaste in their domestic relations. That may be : at all events, 
/ have not yet called it in question. Indiana is yet a young State, 
— not so old as either you or I, — and most of her adult popula- 
tion were born, and I think most of them were reared and married, 
in States which teach and maintain the indissolubility of marriage. 
That population is yet sparse, the greater part of it in moderate 
circumstances, engaged in rural industry, and but slightly exposed 
to the temptations born of crowds, luxury, and idleness. In such 
circumstances, continence would probably be general, even were 
marriage unknown. But let time and change do their work, and 
then see ! Given the population of Italy in the days of the Caesars, 
with easy divorce, and I believe the result would be like that ex- 
perienced by the Roman Republic, which, under the sway of easy 
divorce, rotted away and perished, blasted by the mildew of un- 
chaste mothers and dissolute homes. 

" If experiments are to be tried in the direction you favor, I in- 
sist that they shall be tried fairly, — not under cover of false prom- 
ises and baseless pretences. Let those who will take each other 
on trial ; but let such unions have a distinct name, as in Paris or 
Hayti, and let us know just who are married (old style), and who 
have formed unions to be maintained or terminated as circum- 
stances shall dictate. Those who choose the latter will of course 
consummate it without benefit of clergy ; but I do not see how 
they need even so much ceremony as that of jumping the broom- 



526 MISCELL*ANEOUS. 

stick. ' I '11 love you so long as I 'm able, and swear for no longer 
than this,' — what need is there of any solemnity to hallow such a 
union ? What libertine would hesitate to promise that much, even 
if fully resolved to decamp next morning ? If man and woman are 
to be true to each other only so long as they shall each find con- 
stancy the dictate of their several inclinations, there can be no such 
crime as adultery, and mankind have too long been defrauded of 
innocent enjoyment by priestly anathemas and ghostly maledic- 
tions. Let us each do what for the moment shall give us pleasur- 
able sensations, and let all such fantasies as Grod, duty, conscience, 
retribution, eternity, be banished to the moles and the bats, with 
other forgotten rubbish of bygone ages of darkness and unreal 
terrors. 

"But if — as I firmly believe — marriage is a matter which con- 
cerns, not only the men and women who contract it, but the state, 
the community, mankind, — if its object be not merely the mutual 
gratification and advantage of the husband and wife, but the due 
sustenance, nurture, and education of their children, — if, in other 
words, those who voluntarily incur the obligations of parentage can 
only discharge those obligations personally and conjointly, and to 
that end are bound to live together in love at least until their 
youngest child shall have attained perfect physical and intellectual 
maturity, — then I deny that a marriage can be dissolved save by 
death or that crime which alone renders its continuance impossi- 
ble. I look beyond the special case to the general law, and to the 
reason which underlies that law ; and I say, no couple can inno- 
cently take upon themselves the obligations of marriage until they 
KNOW that they are one in spirit, and so must remain forever. If 
they rashly lay profane hands on the ark, theirs alone is the blame ; 
be theirs alone the penalty ! They have no right to cast it on that 
public which admonished and entreated them to forbear, but ad- 
monished and entreated in vain." 

HIS IDEA OF AN AMERICAN COLLEGE. 

An address at the laying of the corner-stone of the People's Col- 
lege, at Havana, in the State of New York, September 1, 1858. 

"Fellow-Citizens and Friends: — William Hazlitt, an eminent 
scholar and critic, writing some thirty or forty years since of the 
ignorance of the learned, says : — 



HIS IDEA OF AN AMERICAN COLLEGE. 527 

" * Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know. He 
is the most learned man who knows the most of what is furthest removed from 
common life and actual observation, that is of the least practical utility, and 
least liable to be brought to the test of experience, and that, having been handed 
down through the greatest number of intermediate stages, is the most full of 
imcertainties, difficulties, contradictions. It is seeing with the eyes of others, 
hearing' with their ears, and pinning our faith on their understandings. The 
learned man prides himself on the knowledge of names and dates, not of men 
and things. He does not know whether his oldest acquaintance is a knave or 
a fool, but he can pronounce a pompous lecture on all the principal characters 
in history. He knows as much of what he talks about as a blind man does 
of colors.' 

" Such is the learning which the People's College is intended to 
supplant ; such the ignorance which it is designed to dispel ; such 
the reproach which it is intended to remove. 

" As one of the early and earnest, if not very efficient advocates 
of this College, allow me to state briefly the ideas and purposes 
which animated the pioneers in the enterprise of which we to-day 
celebrate the preliminary triumph. 

'' I. The germinal idea of the People's College affirms the neces- 
sity of a thorough and appropriate education for the practical man 
in whatever department of business or industry. The farmer, me- 
chanic, manufacturer, engineer, miner, &c., &c., needs to understand 
thoroughly the materials he employs or moulds, and the laws which 
govern their various states and transmutations. In other words, a 
thorough mastery of geology, chemistry, and the related sciences, 
with their applications, is to-day the essential basis of fitness to lead 
or direct in any department of industry. This knowledge we need 
seminaries to impart, — seminaries which shall be devoted mainly, 
or at least emphatically, to Natural Science, and which shall not re- 
quire of their pupils the devotion of their time and mental energies 
to the study of the dead languages. I am not here to denounce or 
disparage a classical course of study. I trust and have no doubt 
that facilities for pursuing such a course will be afforded and im- 
proved in this institution. I only protest against the requirement 
of, application to, and proficiency in, the dead languages of all col- 
lege students, regardless of the length of time they may be able to 
devote to study, and of the course of fife they meditate. A clas- 
sical education may be very appropriate, even indispensable, for the 
embryo lawyer or clergyman, yet not at all suited to the wants of 



528 MISCELLANEOUS. 

the prospective farmer, artisan, or engineer. We want a seminary 
which recognizes the varying intellectual needs of all our aspiring 
youth, and suitably provides for them. We want a seminary 
which provides as fitly and thoroughly for the education of the 
'captains of industry,' as Yale or Harvard does for those who are 
dedicated to either of the professions. 

*' II. We seek and meditate a perfect combination of study with 
labor. Of course, this is an enterprise of great difficulty, destined 
to encounter the most formidable obstacles from false pride, natural 
indolence fashion, tradition, and exposure to ridicule. It is deplor- 
ably true that a large portion, if not even a majority, of our youth 
seeking a liberal education addict themselves to study in order that 
they may escape a life of manual labor, and would prefer not to 
study if they knew how else to make a living without downright 
muscular exertion, but they do not ; so they submit to be ground 
through academy and college, not that they love study or its intel- 
lectual fruits, but that they may obtain a livelihood with the least 
possible sweat and toil. Of course, these will not be attracted by 
our programme, and it is probably well for us that they are not. 
But I think there is a class — small, perhaps, but increasing — who 
would fain study, not in order to escape their share of manual labor, 
but to qualify them to perform their part in it more efficiently and 
usefully ; not in order to shun work, but to qualify them to work 
to better purpose. They have no mind to be made drudges, but 
they have faith in the ultimate elevation of mankind above the ne- 
cessity of life-long, unintermitted drudgery, and they aspire to do 
something toward securing or hastening that consummation. They 
know that manual labor can only be dignified or elevated by ren- 
dering it more intelligent and efficient, and that this cannot be so 
long as the educated and the intellectual shun such labor as fit jnly 
for boors. 

" Our idea regards physical exertion as essential to human devel- 
opment, and productive industry as the natural, proper, God-given 
sphere of such exertion. Exercise, recreation, play, are well enough 
in their time and place ; but work is the divine provision for devel- 
oping and strengthening the physical frame. Dyspepsia, debility, 
and a hundred forms of wasting disease are the results of ignorance 
or defiance of this truth. The stagnant marsh and the free, pure 
running stream aptly exemplify the disparity in health and vigor 



HIS IDEA OF AN AMERICAN COLLEGE. 529 

between the worker and the idler. Intellectual labor, rightly di- 
rected, is noble, — far be it from me to disparage it, — but it does 
not renovate and keep healthful the physical man. To this end, we 
insist, persistent muscular exertion is necessary, and, as it is always 
well that exercise should have a purpose other than exercise, every 
human being not paralytic or bed-ridden should bear a part in 
manual labor, and the young and immature most of all. The brain- 
sweat of the student, the tax levied by study on the circulation 
and the vision, are best counteracted by a daily devotion of a few 
hours to manual labor. 

" Moreover, there are thousands of intellectual, aspiring youth 
who are engaged in a stern wrestle with poverty, — who have no 
relatives who can essentially aid them, and only a few dollars and 
their own muscles between them and the almshouse. These would 
gladly qualify themselves for the highest usefulness ; but how shall 
they ? If they must give six months of each year to teacliing, or 
some other vocation, in order to provide means for pursuing their 
studies through the residue of the year, their progress must be slow 
indeed. But bring the study and the work together, — let three 
or four hours of labor break up the monotony of the day's lessons, 
— and they may pursue theu- studies from New Year's to Christmas, 
and from their sixteenth year to their twenty-first respectively, 
should they see fit, without serious or damaging interruption. I 
know that great difficulties are to be encountered, great obstacles 
surmounted, in the outset ; but I feel confident that each student 
of sixteen years or over, who gives twenty hours per week to man- 
ual labor at this College, may earn at least one dollar per week from 
the outset, and ultimately two dollars, and in some cases three dol- 
lars per week by such labor. How welcome an accession to his 
scanty means many a needy student would find this sum I need 
not insist on. And when it is considered that this modicum of la- 
bor would at the same time conduce to his health, vigor, and phys- 
ical development, and tend to quahfy him for usefulness and inde- 
pendence in after life, I feel that the importance and the beneficence 
of the requirement of manual labor embodied in the constitution of 
this College cannot be overestimated. 

" III. Another idea cherished by the friends of this enterprise 
was that of justice to woman. They did not attempt to indicate 
nor to define woman's sphere, — to decide that she ought or ought 
34 



530 MISCELLANEOUS. 

not to vote or sit on juries, — to prescribe how she should dress, 
nor what should be the Umits of her field of life-long exertion. 
They did not assume that her education should be identical with 
that of the stronger sex, nor to indicate wherein it should be pecu- 
liar; but they did intend that the People's College should afford 
equal facihties and opportunities to young women as to young 
men, and should proffer them as fi-eely to the former as to the lat- 
ter, allowing each student, under the guidance of his or her parents, 
with the counsel of the faculty, to decide for him or herself what 
studies to pursue and what emphasis should be given to each. 
They beheved that woman, Uke man, might be trusted to deter- 
mine for herself what studies were adapted to her needs, and what 
acquirements would most conduce to her own preparation for and 
efficiency in the duties of active Hfe. They held the education of 
the two sexes together to be advantageous if not indispensable to 
both, imparting strength, earnestness, and dignity to woman, and 
grace, sweetness, and purity to man. They beheved that such 
commingling in the halls of learning would animate the efforts and 
accelerate the progress of the youth of either sex, through the influ- 
ence of the natural and laudable aspiration of each to achieve and 
enjoy the good opinion of the other. They believed that the mere 
aspect of a college whereto both sexes are welcomed as students 
would present a strong contrast to the naked, slovenly, neglected, 
ungraceful, cheerless appearance of the old school colleges, which 
would furnish of itself a strong argument in favor of the more gen 
erous plan. I trust this idea of the pioneers will not be ignored 
by their successors, 

" Friends, a noble beginning has here been made ; may the enter- 
prise be vigorously prosecuted to completion. To this end, it is 
necessary that means should be provided, — that the wealthy of 
their abundance and the poorer according to their abihty should 
contribute to the founding and endowment of the noble institution 
whose corner-stone we have just laid. Let each contribute who 
can, and a seminary shaU here be established which shall prove a 
blessing, and the parent of kindred blessings, to your children and 
your children's children throughout future time." 



HOW HE WOULD BEQUEATH AN ESTATE. 53j[ 

WHAT HE WOULD DO IF HE HAD A LARGE ESTATE TO BEQUEATH.' 

" To THE Editor of the New York Tribune : — 

" Sir : — An unmarried man, who has passed the meridian of life, who has 
gained his plum, and made provision for the attendants who have sei-ved him 
diligently through the summer of life, feels desirous of making the best use of 
the substance he may leave, and would ask as a special favor of the editors (in 
whom he has the utmost confidence) what disposition it is best to make of it 
Please reply through the medium of your journal, and oblige, 

"A Constant Reader." 

"REPLY. 

" I. If we had ' a plum ' to dispose of, and were as unfettered in 
its disposition as our ' reader ' would seem to be, we would, first of 
all things, estabhsh in this city a Universal Free Intelligence Office, 
— that is, an office to which any person or company in any part of 
the world might freely apply for laborers in any capacity, and to 
which persons of each sex and of whatever capacity or condition 
might freely apply at all times for work. At this office let the 
names of aU who want employment be duly inscribed, stating, 
1. What they know how to do well ; 2. What they would prefer 
to do ; 3. What wages will satisfy them ; and 4. Where they may 
be seen or addressed when not at the office, and at what hour of 
each day they will call at said office until engaged. Here let also 
the names of aU who want teachers, clerks, copyists, farmers, gar- 
deners, laborers, cooks, nurses, seamstresses, &c., be inscribed in 
another set of books, setting forth their respective locations, re- 
quirements, and what they are willing to pay, and to whom refer- 
ence may be made in the city with regard to their character and 
responsibihty. Such an office, wherein all who want work and all 
who want workers should be brought freely into communication 
with each other, would, at a cost of less than $ 10,000 per annum, 
save the poor the $ 100,000 or over that they now pay to Intelh- 
gence Offices. a,nd serve them ten times as well as these do or can. 
It would add largely to the industrial efficiency of our country, by 
reducing the sum of involuntary idleness to a minimum, and send 
back to the cornfields and meadows which need them, thousands 
of yjuth who now idly, wastefully, perilously haunt our pave- 
ments, hoping to be employed as clerks, copyists, teachers, &c., 
when there is no demand for their services in any such capacity. 

"II. If our ' reader ' does not incline to the good work above in- 



532 MISCELLANEOUS. 

dicated, or is able to do that and something more, or his kind pur- 
pose is emulated by some one else who has wealth at command, 
we would earnestly urge the importance of establishing a Free 
University, — not one wherein aspiring youth may be educated at 
others' cost, but one wherein youth of either sex may earn their 
own tuition and subsistence during the years, few or many, which 
they may see fit to devote to study. This country should have 'at 
least one hundred seminaries to which any youth eager to learn 
and wilhng to work might repair at any time after his or her fif- 
teenth year, and there, alternating fi-om work to study daily, being 
credited for his work, and charged for his room, tuition, and board, 
remain two, four, or six years, and find a small- balance in his favor 
on making up his account when preparing to leave. One person, 
being specially energetic and skilful, might pay his way by three 
hours' work per day ; others might have to work five to insure the 
same result; but so long as food, clothing, shelter, &c., are the 
product of human muscles, it ought to be easy for those who desire 
to study, yet have no other means than their own God-given fac- 
ulties, to acquire a thorough education, paying for it as they re- 
ceive it. We have in our State an embryo of such a seminary in 
'The People's College' (for further information, address Amos 
Brown, Havana, N". Y.), and there are some kindred beginnings in 
Illinois, Kansas, and other quarters. Let our ' Constant Eeader ' 
make himself familiar with these, and, if none of them proves satis- 
factory, let him, or some one like him, estabhsh a better. What- 
ever faults may be developed in this or that plan, or its execution, 
the idea of self-supporting education is a noble one, and will yet be 
reaHzed. And, if there only were fifty colleges in which youth 
who aspire to knowledge, but are unblessed (or uncursed) with 
property, could pursue a thorough course of study, and pay their 
way throughout by their own labor, we believe they would aU be 
filled with students within a year. ' It is the first step that costs ' ; 
and when one such institution shall have been established, and 
shaU have proved that study and labor are by no means incompat- 
ible, the other forty -nine will easily and rapidly follow. Will not 
our * Constant Reader,' and other constant or occasional readers, be 
moved to do something toward this great and necessary work of 
rendering the highest and most thorough education accessible to 
the poorest yorith, so that they be willing to work for it ? " 



HOW HE BECAME A PROTECTIONIST. 533 

HOW HE BECAME A "PROTECTIONIST." 

From an address on taking the cliair as President of the " Amer- 
ican Institute," in 1866 : — 

"It is now more than thirty-four years since I, a minor and a 
stranger in this city, had my attention drawn to a notice in the 
journals that the friends of protection to American industry were 
to meet that day in convention at the rooms of the American In- 
stitute, — said Institute being then much younger than, though not 
so obscure as, I was. I had no work, and could find none : so, feel- 
ing a deep interest in and devotion to the cause which that con- 
vention was designed to promote, I attended its sittings ; and this 
was my first introduction to the American Institute ; which I have 
ever since esteemed and honored, though the cares and labors of a 
busy, anxious hfe have not allowed me hitherto to devote to its 
meetings the time that I would gladly have given them. 

" I recur to the fact that I was drawn to the American Institute 
by my interest in and sympathy with the cause of protection to 
home industry. From early boyhood I had sat at the feet of Hez- 
ekiah Niles and Henry Clay and Walter Forward and RolHn 0. 
Mallory, and other champions of this doctrine, and I had attained 
from a perusal of theirs and kindred writings and speeches a most 
undoubting conviction that the policy they commended was emi- 
nently calculated to impel our country swiftly and surely onward 
through activity and prosperity to greatness and assured weU- 
being. I had studied the question dispassionately, — for the jour- 
nals accessible to my boyhood were mainly those of Boston, then 
almost if not quite unanimously hostile to protection ; but the argu- 
ments they combated seemed to me far stronger than those they 
advanced, and I early became an earnest and ardent disciple of the 
school of Niles and Clay. I could not doubt that the policy they 
commended was that best calculated to lead a country of vast and 
undeveloped resources, like ours, up from rude poverty and depen- 
dence, to skilled efficiency, wealth, and power. And the convic- 
tions thus formed have been matured and strengthened by the 
observations and experience of subsequent years. Thus was I 
attracted to the rooms and the counsels of the American Institute." 



534 MISCELLANEOUS. 

HIS ADVICE TO AMBITIOUS YOUNG MEN. 

"*I want to go into business,' is the aspiration of our young 
men ; ' can't you find me a place in the city ? ' their constant in- 
quiry. 'Friend,' we answer to many, 'the best business you can 
go into you will find on your father's farm, or in his workshop. If 
you have no family or friends to aid you, and no prospect opened 
to you there, turn your face to the Great West, and there build up 
a home and fortune. But dream not of getting suddenly rich by 
speculation, rapidly by trade, or anyhow by a profession : all these 
avenues are choked by eager, struggling aspirants, and ten must be 
trodden down in the press, where one can vault upon his neighbor's 
shoulders to honor or wealth. Above all, be neither afraid nor 
ashamed of honest industry; and if you catch yourself fancying 
anything more respectable than this, be ashamed of it to the last 
day of your hfe. Or, if you find yourself shaking more cordially 
the hand of your cousin the congressman than of your uncle the 
blacksmith, as sucJi^ write yourself down an enemy to the princi- 
ples of our institutions, and a traitor to the dignity of humanity.' " 

TO THE LOVERS OF KNOWLEDGE. 

" Avoid the pernicious error that you must have a profession, — 
must be a clergyman, lawyer, doctor, or something of the sort, — 
in order to be influential, useful, respected ; or, to state the case in 
its best aspect, that you may lead an intellectual life. Nothing of 
the kind is necessary, — very far from it. If your tendencies are 
intellectual, — if you love knowledge, wisdom, virtue, for them- 
selves, you will grow in them, whether you earn your bread by a 
profession, a trade, or by tilling the ground. Nay, it may be 
doubted whether the farmer or mechanic, who devotes his leisure ' 
hours to intellectual pursuits from a pure love of them, has not 
some advantages therein over the professional man. He comes to 
his book at evening with his head clear and his mental appetite 
sharpened by the manual labors, taxing hghtly the spirit or brain ; 
while the lawyer, who has been running over dry books for prece- 
dents, the doctor, who has been racking his wits for a remedy 
adapted to some new modification of disease, or the divine, who, 
immured in his closet, has been busy preparing his next sermon, 
may well approach the evening volume with faculties jaded and 
palled." 



TO COUNTRY MERCHANTS. 535 

TO YOUNG LAWYE^IS AND DOCTORS. 

" Qualify yourselves at college to enlighten the farmers and mechanics 
among whom you settle in the scientific principles and facts which un- 
derlie their several vocations. The great truths of geology, chemis- 
try, &c., &c., ought to be well known to you when your education 
is completed, and these, if you have the ability to impart and eluci- 
date them, will make you honorably known to the inhabitants of 
any county wherein you may pitch your tent, and will thus insure 
you a subsistence from the start, and ultimately professional em- 
ployment and competence. Qualify yourself to lecture accurately 
and fluently on the more practical and important principles of Nat- 
ural Science, and you will soon find opportunities, auditors, cus- 
tomers, friends. Show the farmer how to fertilize his fields more 
cheaply and efioctively than he has hitherto done, — teach the 
builder the principles and more expedient methods of heating and 
ventilation, — tell the mason how to correct, by understanding and 
obeying nature's laws, the defect which makes a chimney smoke 
at the wrong end, — and you need never stand idle, nor long await 
remunerating employment." 

TO COUNTRY MERCHANTS. 

" The merchant's virtue should be not merely negative and ob- 
structive, — it should be actively beneficent. He should use oppor- 
tunities afforded by his vocation to foster agricultural and mechan- 
ical improvement, to advance the cause of education, and diffuse 
the principles, not only of virtue, but of refinement and correct taste. 
He should be continually on the watch for whatever seems calcu- 
lated to instruct, ennoble, refine, dignify, and benefit the community 
in which he lives. He should be an early and generous patron of 
useful inventions and discoveries, so far as his position and means 
will permit. He should be a regular purchaser of new and rare 
books, such as the majority will not buy, yet ought to read, with 
a view to the widest dissemination of the truths they unfold. If 
located in the country, he should never visit the city to replenish 
his stock, without endeavoring to bring back something that will 
afford valuable suggestions to his customers and neighbors. If 
these are in good part farmers, and no store in the vicinity is de- 
voted especially to this department, he should be carefiil to keep a 



536 MISCELLANEOUS. 

supply of the best ploughs and other implements of farming, as 
well as the choicest seeds, cuttings, &c., and those fertilizing sub- 
stances best adapted to the soil of his township, er most advan- 
tageously transported thither; and those he should be very willing 
to sell at cost, especially to the poor or the penurious, in order to 
encourage their general acceptance and use. Though he make no 
profit directly on the sale of these, he is indirectly but substantially 
benefited by whatsoever shall increase the annual production of 
his township, and thus the ability of his customers to purchase and 
consume his goods. The merchant w^hose customers and neighbors 
are enabled to turn ofi* three, five, seven, or nine hundred dollars' 
worth of produce per annum from farms which formerly yielded 
but one or two hundred dollars' worth, beyond the direct consump- 
tion of their occupants, is in the true and safe road to competence 
and wealth if he knows how to manage his business. Every wild 
wood or waste morass rendered arable and fruitful, every field 
made to grow fifty bushels of grain per acre where but fifteen or 
twenty were formerly reahzed, is a new tributary to the stream of 
his trade, and so clearly conducive to his prosperity." 

IN WHAT SENSE HE CONSIDERS HIMSELF A POLITICIAN. 

" If the designation of politician is a discreditable one, I trust I 
have done nothing toward making it so. If to consider not only 
what is desirable, but what is possible as well, — if to consider in 
what order desirable ends can be attained, and attempt them in 
that order, — if to seek to do one good so as not to undo another, 
— if either or all of these constitute one a politician, I do not shrink 
fi-om the appellation." 

HORACE Greeley's toast, sent to a "know-nothing" banquet. 

" The Comrades of Washington, — Let us remember that, while 
the ' foreigners ' Montgomery and Pulaski died gloriously, fighting 
for our freedom, while Lafayette, Hamilton, and Steuben proved 
nobly faithful to the end, the traitor Arnold and the false ingrate 
Burr were sons of the soil, — = facts which only prove that virtue is 
bounded by no geographical limits, and treachery peculiar neither 
to the native nor the immigrant." 



HIS REPLY TO A BEGGING LETTER. 537 

HIS REPLY TO A BEGGING LETTER. 

To THE Editor of the New York Tribune : — 
My Dear Sir : — The young gentlemen of the Philologian Literary So- 
ciety of the Masonic College request me to tender their sincere regards to 
you and ask if you will be so kind as to donate to them a copy of the Weekly 
Tribune. The Society consists of fifty students, who are anxious to form, for 
their sole benefit, a reading-room in their hall. 

" While we all abhor your principles, we respect you as a talented and hon- 
orable foe ; and your paper would be cheerfully welcomed in our hall, not for 
the principles which it advocates, but for the ability with which they are 
promulgated. Be assured, sir, that we will all feel under many obligations if 
you will make us such a present. With gratitude and respect, 

" S. C. H., Corresponding Secretary. 

"Lexington, Mo., January 30, 1855." 

"REPLY. 
"Mr. Secretary: — Among those 'principles' which you say 
you abhor, this one is prominent, namely, that Grod having wisely 
and benignly ordered his universe that Something can never he ac- 
quired for Nothing, — that ' so much for so much ' is the eternal 
and immutable law, — man should conform his conduct to this be- 
neficent law. The robber, the swindler, the beggar, the slave- 
holder, all vainly suppose that there is some other way of acquir- 
ing and enjoying the products of other men's labor than by paying 
for it; but Grod says no, and he will be obeyed. Steal, cheat, beg, 
or enslave as you may, you can at best but postpone payment, — 
it will at last be exacted with fearful usury. In short, as there is 
no other proper way, so there is no other way so cheap, when we 
desire aught that is produced by the labor of others, as to fork over 
the needful, — lay it right down on the nail. You will see, there- 
fore, that those detested principles, which you are at liberty hence- 
forth to abhor more than ever, forbid my complying with your 
dehcately worded request. 

" Editor Tribune." 

HIS REPLY to another. A. B. TO HORACE GREELEY. 

" Dear Sir : — In your extensive correspondence, you have undoubtedly 
secured several autographs of the late distinguished American poet, Edgar A 
Foe. If so, will you please favor me with one, and oblige, 
" Yours, respectfully, 

"AB." 



538 MISCELLANEOUS. 

HORACE GREELEY TO A. B. 

" Dear Sir : — I happen to have in my possession but one auto- 
graph of the late distinguished American poet, Edgar A. Poe. It 
consists of an I. 0. U., with my name on tlie back of it. It cost 
me just $ 50, and you can have it for half price. 
" Yours, 

" Horace G-reelet." 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

HORACE GREELEY NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 

The history of the Convention which met at Cincinnati on the 
1st of May, 1872, is fresh in the recollection of every reader, and 
need not be repeated here. I am glad that it is so. Not a word 
of this volume was written for the purpose of promoting Mr. 
Greeley's political advancement. Indeed, I never supposed that 
so outspoken a person could be nominated to an important execu- 
tive office. I may also confess that I heard of his nomination to 
the presidency with regret ; for, now that the great prosperity of 
" The Tribune " places the editor more at ease than he has usually 
been, I have indulged the hope that he would at last be able to 
realize the dream of thirty years, and go a-fishing. It is only 
necessary to place on record here the final proceedings of the Con- 
vention which resulted in the nomination of Horace Greeley for 
the presidency. 

On the morning of the third day, Mr. Horace White, editor 
of " The Chicago Tribune," and Chairman of the Committee on 
the Platform, reported an address and twelve resolutions, both of 
which were adopted by the Convention with unanimity and en- 
thusiasm. 

THE ADDRESS. 

The Administration now in power has rendered itself guilty of 
wanton disregard of the laws of the land, and of usurping powers 
not granted by the Constitution ; it has acted as if the laws had 
binding force only for those who are governed, and not for those 
who govern. It has thus struck a blow at the fundamental prin- 
ciples of Constitutional government and the liberties of the citi- 
zen. 

539 



x\) NOMINATED FOR THU PRESIDENCY. 

The President of the United States has openly used the powers 
and opportunities of his high office for the promotion of personal 
ends. 

He has kept notoriously corrupt and unworthy men in places of 
power and responsibility, to the detriment of the public interest. 

He has used the public service of the Government as a machinery 
of corruption and personal influence, and has interfered, with 
tyrannical arrogance, in the political affairs of States and munici- 
palities. 

He has rewarded with influential and lucrative offices men who 
had acquired his favor by valuable presents, thus stimulating 
demoralization of our political life by his conspicuous example. 

He has shown himself deplorably unequal to the tasks imposed 
upon him by the necessities of the country, and culpably careless 
of the responsibilities of his high office. 

The partisans of the Administration, assuming to be the Repub- 
lican party, and controlling its organization, have attempted to 
justify such wrongs, and palliate such abuses, to the end of main- 
taining partisan ascendency. 

They have stood in the way of necessary investigations and 
indispensable reforms, pretending that no serious fault could be 
found with the present administration of public affairs, thus seek- 
ing to blind the eyes of the people. 

They have kept alive the passions and resentments of the late 
civil war, to use them for their own advantage ; they have resorted 
to arbitrary measures, in direct conflict with the organic law, in- 
stead of appealing to the better instincts and latent patriotism of 
the Southern people, by restoring to them those rights the enjoy- 
ment of which is indispensable to a successful administration of 
their local afiairs, and would tend to revive a patriotic and hopeful 
national feeling. 

They have degraded themselves and the name of their party, 
once justly entitled to the confidence of the nation, by a base syco- 
phancy to the dispenser of the Executive power and patronage, 
unworthy of republican freemen ; they have sought to silence the 
voice of just criticism, and stifle the moral sense of the people, and 
to subjugate public opinion by tyrannical party discipline. 

They are striving to maintain themselves in authority for selfish 
ends, by an unscrupulous use of the power which rightfully belongs 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 541 

to the people, and should be employed only in the service of the 
country. 

Believing that an organization thus led and controlled can no 
longer be of service to the best interests of the Republic, we 
have resolved to make an independent appeal to the sober judg- 
ment, conscience, and patriotism of the American people. 

THE RESOLUTIONS. 

We, the Liberal Republicans of the United States in National 
Convention assembled at Cincinnati, proclaim the following prin- 
ciples as essential to just government : — 

First — We recognize the equality of all men before the law, 
and hold that it is the duty of Government, in its dealings with the 
people, to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever 
nativity, race, color, or persuasion, religious or political. 

Second — We pledge ourselves to maintain the union of these 
States, emancipation and enfranchisement, and to oppose any re- 
opening of the questions settled by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, 
and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. 

Third — We demand the immediate and absolute removal of all 
disabilities imposed on account of the rebellion which was finally 
subdued seven years ago, believing that universal amnesty will re- 
sult in complete pacification in all sections of the country. 

Fourth — Local self-government with impartial suffrage will 
guard the rights of all citizens more securely than any centralized 
power. The public welfare requires the supremacy of the civil 
over the military authority, and the freedom of person under the 
protection of the habeas corpus. We demand for the individual 
the largest liberty consistent with public order, for the State self- 
government, and for the Nation a return to the methods of peace 
and the constitutional limitations of power. 

Fifth — The civil service of the Government has become a mere 
instrument of partisan tyranny and personal ambition, and an ob- 
ject of selfish greed. It is a scandal and reproach upon free in- 
stitutions, and breeds a demoraUzation dangerous to the perpetuity 
of republican government. 

Sixth — We therefore regard a thorough reform of the civil ser- 
vice as one of the most pressing necessities of the hour ; that hon- 



542 NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 

esty, capacity, and fidelity constitute the only valid claims to 
public employment ; that the offices of the government cease to 
be a matter of arbitrary favoritism and patronage, and that public 
station shall become again a post of honor. To this end it is im- 
peratively required that no President shall be a candidate for 
re-election. 

Seventh — We demand a system of Federal taxation which shall 
not unnecessarily interfere with the industry of the people, and 
which shall provide the means necessary to pay the expenses of 
the Government, economically administered, the pensions, the in- 
terest on the public debt, and a moderate annual reduction of 
the principal thereof; and, recognizing that there are in our 
midst honest but irreconcilable differences of opinion with regard 
to the respective systems of protection and free trade, we remit 
the discussion of the subject to the people in their Congressional 
Districts, and to the decision of Congress thereon, wholly free 
from executive interference or dictation. 

Eighth — The public credit must be sacredly maintained, and 
we denounce repudiation in every form and guise. 

Ninth — A speedy return to specie payments is demanded alike 
by the highest considerations of commercial morality and hon- 
est government. 

Tenth — We remember with gratitude the heroism and sacri- 
fices of the soldiers and sailors of the Republic, and no act of ours 
shall ever detract from their justly-earned fame, or the full rewards 
of their patriotism. 

Eleventh — We are opposed to all further grants of land to rail- 
roads, or other corporations. The public domain should be held 
sacred to actual settlers. 

Twelfth — We hold that it is the duty of the Government, in 
its intercourse with foreign nations, to cultivate the friendships of 
peace, by treating with all on fair and equal terms, regarding 
it alike dishonorable either to demand what is not right, or sub- 
mit to what is wrong. 

Thirteenth — For the promotion and success of these vital prin- 
ciples, and the support of the candidates nominated by this Con- 
vention, we invite and cordially welcome the co-operation of all 
patriotic citizens, without regard to previous affiliations. 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 



543 



The leading candidates for the nomination were Charles Francis 
Adams of Massachusetts, Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, David 
Davis of Illinois, Horace Greeley of New York, B. Gratz Brown 
of Missom-i, and Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania. 

Beside these, Charles Sumner and Judge Chase were occasion- 
ally spoken of, and were the first choice of some delegates. The 
whole number of delegates was seven hundred and fourteen, and 
hence three hundred and fifty-eight votes were necessary to a 
choice. The first ballot resulted as follows : — 



Adams 




203 


Greeley . 




147 


Trumbull . 




110 


Brown 




95 


Davis 




92^ 


Curtin 




62 


Chase 




H 



SECOND BALLOT. 

Adams 243 

Greeley 239 

Trumbull 148 

Davis 81 

Brown 2 

Chase 1 

THIRD BALLOT. 

Adams 264 

Greeley 258 

Trumbull 156 

Davis .44 

Brown 2 

FOURTH BALLOT. 

Adams 279 

Greeley 251 

Trumbull 141 

Davis 51 

Brown 2 



544 NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 

FIFTH BALLOT. 

Adams 309 

Greeley 258 

Trumbull . 91 

Davis 30 

Brown 2 

Chase 2^ 

SIXTH BALLOT. 

Greeley 332 

Adams 324 

Chase 32 

Trumbull 19 

Davis 6 

Palmer 1 

As soon as this result was announced, and even before it was 
announced, so many changes of votes took place, that the result 
was no longer doubtful. The Chairman, Hon. Carl Schurz, an- 
nounced the following : — 

Necessary to a choice 358 

Greeley 482 

Adams 187 

The Chairman accordingly declared that Mr. Greeley was the 
nominee of the Convention. The choice of a candidate for the 
Vice-Presidency being next in order, B. Gratz Brown of Missouri 
was nominated upon the second ballot. 

Upon receiving the news of his nomination, Mr. Greeley sent 
the following telegram to Mr. Whitelaw Reid : — 

New York, May 3. 
To Whitelaw Reid, Cincinnati: — 

Tender my grateful acknowledgments to the members of the 
Convention for the generous confidence they have shown me, and 
assure them I shall endeavor to deserve it. 

Horace Greeley. 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 645 

rhe official notification was immediately made by letter to Mr. 
Greeley, who did not at once formally respond. His acknowledo-- 
ment and acceptance finally appeared in the morning papers of 
Ma,y 22. The whole correspondence was as follows : — 

CiNcrNNATi, Ohio, May 3, 1872. 
Dear Sir, — The National Convention of the Liberal Repub- 
licans of the United States have instructed the undersigned, Pres- 
ident, Vice-President, and Secretaries of the Convention, to in- 
form you that you have been nominated as the candidate of the 
Liberal Republicans for the Presidency of the United States. 
We also submit to you the Address and Resolutions unanimously 
adopted by the Convention. 

Be pleased to signify to us your acceptance of the platform and 
the nomination, and believe us, very truly yours, 

C. ScHURZ, President. 
Geo. W. JuLiAJf, Vice-President. 
Wm. E. McLean, ^ 
John G. Davidson, >• Secretaries. 
J. H. Rhodes, ) 

Hon. Horace Greeley, New -York City. 



MR. GREELEY S REPLY. 

Ne-vt York, May 20, 1872. 

Gentlemen, — I have chosen not to acknowledge your letter 
of the 3d inst. until I could learn how the work of your Conven- 
tion was received in all parts of our great country, and judge 
whether that work was approved and ratified by the mass of our 
fellow-citizens. Their response has from day to day reached me 
through telegrams, letters, and the comments of journalists inde- 
pendent of official patronage, and indiflferent to the smiles or 
frowns of power. The number and character of these uncon- 
strained, unpurchased, unsolicited utterances, satisfy me that 
the movement which found expression at Cincinnati has received 
the stamp of public approval, and been hailed by a majority of 
our countrymen as the harbinger of a better day for the Republic. 

I do not misinterpret this approval as especially complimentary 
to myself, nor even to the chivalrous and justly-esteemed gentle- 
46* 



546 NOMINATED FOR THE 'PRESIDENCY. 

man with wliose name I thank your Convention for associating 
mine. I receive and welcome it as a spontaneous and deserved 
tribute to that admirable platform of principles wherein your 
Convention so tersely, so lucidly, so forcibly, set forth the convic- 
tions which impelled, and the purposes which guided, its course, — 
a platform which, casting behind it the wreck and rubbish of 
worn-out contentions and by-gone feuds, embodies in fit and few 
words the needs and aspirations of to-day. Though thousands 
stand ready to condemn your every act, hardly a syllable of criti- 
cism or cavil has been aimed at your platform, of which the sub- 
stance may be fairly epitomized as follows : — 

" First — All the political rights and franchises which have 
been acquired through our late bloody convulsion must and shall 
be guaranteed, maintained, enjoyed, respected, evermore. 

" Second — All the political rights and franchises which have 
been lost through that convulsion should and must be promptly 
restored and re-established, so that there shall be henceforth no 
proscribed class and no disfranchised caste within the limits of 
our Union, whose long-estranged people shall re-unite and frater- 
nize upon the broad basis of universal amnesty with impartial 
suffrage. 

" Third — That, subject to our solemn constitutional obligation 
to maintain the equal rights of all citizens, our policy should aim 
at local self-government, and not at centralization ; that the civil 
authority should be supreme over the military ; that the writ of 
habeas corpus should be jealously upheld as the safeguard of per- 
sonal freedom ; that the individual citizen should enjoy the largest 
liberty consistent with public order, and that there shall be no 
Federal subversion of the internal polity of the several States 
and municipalities, but that each shall be left free to enforce the 
rights and promote the well-being of its inhabitants by such 
means as the judgment of its own people shall prescribe. 

" Fourth — There shall be a real and not merely a simulated 
reform in the civil service of the Republic, to which end it is 
indispensable that the chief dispenser of its vast official patronage 
shall be shielded from the main temptation to use his power 
selfishly by a rule inexorably forbidding and precluding his re- 
election. 

" Fifth — That the raising of revenue, whether by tariff or 



NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 647 

otherwise, shall be recognized and treated as the people's imme- 
diate business, to be shaped and directed by them through their 
representatives in Congress, whose action thereon the President 
must neither overrule by his veto, attempt to dictate, nor presume 
to punish by bestowing office only on those who agree with him, 
or withdrawing it from those who do not. 

" Sixth — That the public lands must be sacredly reserved for 
occupation and acquisition by cultivators, and not recklessly 
squandered on the projectors of railroads for which our people 
have no present need, and the premature construction of which 
is annually plunging us into deeper and deeper abysses of foreign 
indebtedness. 

" Seventh — That the achievement of these grand purposes of 
universal beneficence is expected and sought at the hands of all 
who approve them, irrespective of past affiliations. 

" Eighth — That the public faith must, at all hazards, be main- 
tained, and the national credit preserved. 

" Ninth — That the patriotic devotedness and inestimable ser- 
vices of our fellow-citizens, who, as soldiers or sailors, upheld the 
flag and maintained the unity of the Republic, shall ever be 
gratefully remembered and honorably requited." 

These propositions, so ably and forcibly presented in the plat- 
form of your Convention, have already fixed the attention and 
commanded the assent of a large majority of our countrymen, 
who joyfully adopt them, as I do, as the bases of a true, beneficent 
national reconstruction; of a new departure from jealousies, strifes, 
and hates, which have no longer adequate motive or even plausi- 
ble pretext, into an atmosphere of peace, fraternity, and mutual 
good-will. In vain do the drill-sergeants of decaying organiza- 
tions flourish menacingly their truncheons, and angrily insist that 
the files shall be closed and straightened. In vain do the whip- 
pers-in of parties once vital, because rooted in the vital needs of 
the hour, protest against straying and bolting, denounce men 
nowise their inferiors as traitors and renegades, and threaten 
them with infamy and ruin. I am confident that the American 
people have already made your cause their own, fully resolved that 
their brave hearts and strong arms shall bear it on to triumph. 
In this faith, and with the distinct understanding, that, if elected, 
I shall be the President, not of a party, but of the whole people. 



548 NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY. 

I accept your nomination in the confident trust that the masses 
of our countrymen North and South are eager to clasp hands 
across the bloody chasm which has too long divided them, forget- 
ting that they have been enemies in the joyful consciousness that 
they are, and must henceforth remain, brethren. 

Yours gratefully, 
(Signed) Horace Greeley. 

To Hon. Carl Schurz, President; Hon. George W. Julian, 
Vice-President ; and Messrs. Wm. E. McLean, John G. Da- 
vidson, J. H. B-HODES, Secretaries, of the National Conven- 
tion of the Liberal Republicans of the United States. 






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